Chiaroscuro: Of Light and Shadows
by Gabi-hime
Summary: Set post series -- After graduation, peace has finally settled for the duelist and the scientist she keeps company with, but how long can it last while the mad prince lives? Mikage, Utena, Anthy, and assorted others. Ch. 6 - The challenge is issued.
1. Prelude to Embrace

Chiaroscuro: Of Light and Shadows

  


Chapter One: Prelude to Embrace

  


By Gabi-hime (pinkfluffynet@yahoo.com)

  


A/N: This is set post series, after graduation, if you will. It's an extended fanfic with and extended plot, so don't expect everything to be obvious from the first chapter. And yes, just in case you're curious, that last line is heading somewhere. It wasn't just added in to be unexpected and mysterious. Everything will come to head in time.

* * *

  


  


There are some people who are known only by their titles, as if these titles have come to represent them more than their own personal names have. Or perhaps these people have lost their personal names and are called by their titles not out of deference, but rather, out of lack of something better to call them. Still, there are others who so purely define their title that it seems that no one else is quite so worthy of it.

  


For her, he was always "the Professor." This was regardless of the fact that they'd met during her first coaching job at a university full of like-established degree-hounds. For some reason, from the moment that they formally, or rather, informally met, she had found him quite worthy of the sometimes irreverent nominative.

  


She couldn't help but be somewhat aware of his position in the university even before they met. He was the university's most prized derby stallion, the celebrated lecturer who was the center of the academic community's own critical little renaissance. He was cold, aloof, and to those who did not revere him enough to not recognize his faults, he was elitist, unpleasant, and very nearly antisocial.

  


His fellow professors did not like him. Oh, they respected his brilliance and they knew when to tip their hats, but they did not invite him to lunch, except when was absolutely necessary as decreed by department head. Even then he blessedly declined, preferring his own company to theirs. He always ate alone.

  


Still, he had a strange sort of chill charisma. Those who attended his lectures swore by him and he had many converted disciples, none of which he wanted, if one could trust his personal assertions. He was just as standoffish with his students as he was the faculty, but they seemed to accept this and worship from afar. They spoke his name with reverence, and his cult became as close to a personal religion as was possible among the college students in those days. For them, he was far too busy on higher planes to worry about them.

  


He had a rather unpleasant reputation at the university outside his circle, this she was aware of, although she, by perverse nature, was not one to trust rumors. In fact, she had been on occasion heard to say quite characteristically,   
  


"Piss on rumors. If people don't have anything better to do than talk about other people, then they probably aren't talking about anything worth knowing."

  


They even came into each other's acquaintance completely through chance. On any other day, he would have had his lunch on the ground common, under a hemlock tree. This was well known as "Nemuro's Spot" and no one dared approach him there, which was how he liked it.   
  
However, today the rain was heavy, a freak thunderstorm that forced most of the assorted faculty now taking refuge in the faculty cafeteria to shield themselves with whatever they had handy as they raced over flooded sidewalks to classes that they themselves were tardy for. 

  


Nemuro was displeased with himself. He hadn't had the presence of mind to pack a lunch for himself, and now he was forced to stay in the crowded and noisy cafeteria until the rain slackened enough for him to make it back to his office without arriving like a drowned rat, despite the ebony-handled umbrella that leaned against his chair.

  


He drummed his fingers on the stained carnival colored Formica of the small table and looked out at the downpour. As much as he hated noise and confusion, he hated the rain more. He would stay until it finished, drinking as many cups of tea as it took to weather out the storm. 

  


Thankfully, he had had the sense to bring his briefcase with him, so at least he had something to distract himself from the riot of mundanity that chorused all around him. He passed the time by carefully and measuredly lining out a seal on a spare sheet of graph paper. It was not the seal of the university, and he could not himself quite place why he was drawing it, only that it amused him for the moment, and that he had perhaps glimpsed it once, long ago.

  


He was not aware that someone was watching him, standing quite over his shoulder, until she spoke.

  


"No, it's not like that. It's more alive . . . it's more . . . " 

  


He didn't bother to look up, to see who was criticizing him. His being criticized was unusual, but not that unusual. It was likely one of the more ambitious graduate assistants, hoping to impress him by criticizing something that they couldn't possibly have any clue about. It happened from time to time. He supplied his own dry word, used to finishing off other's sentences when their own vocabularies were not up to the task.

  


"Organic."

  


"No." 

  


This did put him a little off guard for he was not used to people refusing the words that he put into their mouths.

  


"It's not that," she continued and then he heard the sound of rummaging behind him. He was about to turn and face his latest critic when suddenly she leaned over his shoulder, quite invading his personal space. For a long, slow moment, all he knew was a cascade of worrisome pink hair veiling his face and the scent of roses, which haunted him for reasons he could not place. Then the spell was broken, as he heard the familiar scrape of lead over paper and leaned out from under her to see what terror she was wreaking on his precise rendition.

  


She had discarded his own preferred pencil, a steel mechanical shaft with a sharp, hairline precision lead. What she'd pulled from whatever bag she'd rummaged in was a blunt stub of a yellow number two pencil, which she was furiously and boldly using to have at his line drawing.

  


From this position, leaning out from under her serious work, he could place her somewhat. She was wearing a hooded athletic sweatshirt and runner's pants in the University's colors. Since she was in the faculty lounge, she had to be either a new professor of kinesiology or some new sports coach, neither of which he wanted the pleasure of meeting.

  


But still, her eyes were fierce and focused, the blue of cornflowers, or perhaps, he decided as he looked more closely, the blue of cobalt. Her mouth was generous, given to smiling, her chin was strong, and the only lines on her face were ones of determination and of frank bafflement, not of anger or hatred, disdain or pride. For a moment, without further dissecting her personality, or even wondering why, he was honestly and openly interested in her.

  


Then she shifted suddenly and her wet hair grazed his cheek and he looked at her again, this time behind his own personal rose tinted glasses, which did anything but make the world more pleasant. She was wet almost through to the bone, having obviously run to the cafeteria with no protection against the weather other than the clothes she now wore. She was wearing cheap athletic tennis shoes and she was dripping all over the floor and all over him. He wondered idly if he could get security to remove another professor. But still, there was that scent of roses, half drowned in the drench of an autumn downpour that made his mind skip momentarily, made it attempt to revert to a former process. IF this THEN this, ELSE this, but the process hadn't been there for him to complete and he'd been left idling.

  


He adjusted his glasses again. She was what he considered an intellectual vagrant, someone who flitted from topic to topic but stayed not long enough in any field to learn anything other than what might be useful in a board game or on a quiz show, he could tell from her stunted vocabulary. What right did she have to come and criticize one of his drawings that had come, as far as he could tell, from his own fancy?

  


And then she leaned back thoughtfully, surveying her own work critically as she chewed on the end of her pencil,

  


"It's more sensual."

He looked down at the seal she'd scrawled on his carefully lined graph paper and he was forced to concede. Their joint effort was more correct, he knew without knowing why. It just looked right, the lines more powerful and sweeping, not quite so confined and barren. 

  


When he looked up at her, he found that she had taken the seat across from him without asking and was now busily searching through the sports bag she carried.

  


"It's weird," she murmured, apparently to him, as she dug, "It's so weird that you're drawing that."

  


He was about to query exactly what made it so "weird" when she found what she was searching for and offered her own slightly rumpled slip of paper across the table. He opened it and laid it against the other and found another seal very similar to the one he'd drawn. This one was messy and had been gone over several times, presumably by the same stubby pencil that now lay on the table. Much like his original sketch, it was also not quite right, too meandering and unrestrained, too organic and alive, almost cancerous.

  


"See," she related, pointing at her own sketch, "Mine's not right either, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong, but that one," she indicated the drafted one that lay atop his briefcase, "That one's right."

  


She nodded as if to reinforce this statement, and suddenly he knew that she had come to this knowledge as instinctually as he had. She paused for a moment and there was an awkward silence and then she blanched as if suddenly remembering something and put a hand behind her head and laughed nervously.

  


"Oops, I'm Tenjou Utena. Sorry about that. Pleased to meet you," she offered her hand across the table good-naturedly.

  


He stared at it for a long second. He was not in the habit of shaking hands with anyone, in fact, he wore black leather gloves most of the time to curtail the number of times he would have to actually physically touch others. It was yet another eccentricity of his that his disciples allowed and revered. But these gloves were now tucked into his coat pocket, as he didn't want to wear them while having tea, and he couldn't exactly fish them out and put them on without appearing exceedingly rude. If he was going to be rude then he wasn't going to shake her hand at all, not go through some farce with gloves.

  


But then he looked at her. He really looked at her without the shroud of bitter, disdainful, loneliness and in those full, deep cobalt eyes, he saw some lost reflection of himself and without meaning to, without consciously making any sort of decision at all, he had taken her hand.

  


She did not shake it vigorously as he had expected, nor did she test grips, as he suspected was also likely, just gave his hand one simple friendly squeeze, as if they'd know each other for a long time.

  


Then he realized that it was he who was now being rude and cleared his throat before speaking slowly, as one does when not used to personal communication, "I'm Professor Nemuro." 

  


He almost felt like adding the obligatory list of letters after his name that was justification for his title, but he didn't. He felt an odd kinship with this girl now that he'd glimpsed himself in her, or perhaps, seen her in himself.

  


Now that they were properly introduced, she seemed much more relaxed, and leaned back in her chair, attempting to wring some of the water out of her hair, "Hey Professor, I hope you don't mind me asking, but why were you drawing that thing?"

  


He folded his hands one over the other and regarded the sketch absently even as he answered truthfully, "I don't know why I was drawing the sigil."

  


"It's a rose seal," she responded quickly, automatically, and then blinked at her response.

  


He nodded slowly as he looked at her, as if suddenly coming into this realization himself, "It is."

  


The awkward silence descended upon them again and he found himself looking at her hands. They were long fingered and strong, able and ready. She had a healthy tan, except around her right ring finger, which had a curiously pale band.

  


"Are you married?" he asked abruptly, without meaning too.

  


She was apparently not offended by the sudden and unwarranted question because she shook her head and nodded back to his own hands, pale, sensitive, and slender, yet with their own telltale band of paler flesh.

  


"Are you?"

  


It was his turn to shake his head. He sipped his tea and without knowing why, confided in her as if she were an old acquaintance, "I don't know where that came from. It dates from my curiously amnesiac period. There are fifteen years of my life that I cannot place. I don't know what happened during that time, but I feel confidant in saying that I wasn't married. Some record of that would exist. There exists no record of my time lost," here he paused and realized that he had offered a great deal of his personal self up for close inspection, and he curled inward protectively, "You probably think I sound like a lunatic."

  


"No," she seemed to speak the word sharper than she meant, for she repeated it almost immediately after in a softer tone, "I'm missing a year."

  


"What?" he asked, quite taken aback inwardly, although little showed on his cool exterior. He had yet to meet anyone who'd had a similar experience to his own, and this girl across from him, with only four and a half words, had set his careful balance to swaying precariously.

  


"I'm missing a year at the end of junior high and the beginning of high school," she repeated and clarified, holding up the hand with the phantom ring on it, "That's where I got this. It hasn't gone away yet, no matter how much I stay in the sun. It's like some kind of scar."

  


He stared hard at the mark on his own hand and his lips were set in a thin line, "Or like some kind of brand."

  


She seemed to wonder at his strange harshness, but she did not press him, and for that, he was thankful, because he could not explain it himself, and he did not like to be on the receiving end of anything that he could not explain. It was then that he realized that perhaps the cafeteria was not the best place for this conversation, as there were likely many ears out to hear the celebrated Professor Nemuro actually having a private conversation with someone. He glanced out the plate glass window and noted that the rain was slacking up a bit and perhaps might bear him to brave it, provided he kept the umbrella close.

  


"Miss Tenjou, perhaps it would be better if we continued our conversation in my office," and forever after that, it was always 'Miss Tenjou' until circumstances warranted more intimacy. Even then he was hard pressed to abandon the honorific in favor of a diminutive, but such was the nature of Nemuro, who many found to be more like a computer than a computer is itself.

  


She nodded and they rose together, he startling both her and himself by offering her refuge under his own soot-black umbrella.

  


The long talk they had on the way to his office, and then later over dinner was the first of many that would pepper their often rocky relationship. He was a difficult man to get along with, but she learned his patterns and wants, and he began to wonder how he'd ever gotten along without her. He learned exactly how far he could push her before she'd explode in a fury and declare that she never wanted to see him again. He learned that she was not an intellectual vagrant, but rather a very intelligent young woman, in a sort of fiercely innocent dream. She lived by her ideals and often pressed them upon him, and it took her a while to realize that he had already passed through the stage where he could be stirred to fire by a good enough oration. She wanted to slap him often, for his sharp tongue was quick to cut the legs out from under her ideals, and he was often snide and hurtful without realizing it, but she held herself back, if only because that even then she was aware that she was physically stronger than he was, and she would not attack someone weaker than she. She learned that behind his facade of arrogance and disdain, he actually a very lonely man who was at a loss as to how to say it and unwilling to admit weakness to her. In a few short months, they learned each other better than they had known themselves previously, and although still volatile, he learned to control his acidic tongue and she learned to control her often violent temper.

  


One night, after a particularly strenuous philosophical debate on the nature of good and evil, she lay against him, curled with her cheek on his pale chest and asked, "Do you think absolute power corrupts absolutely, or do you think that absolute power attracts crackpots?"

  


He murmured something noncommittal into her hair and then answered drily, "That's interesting bedroom conversation, even for you. So who do you think holds this absolute power? I'm assuming it's not me, otherwise the conversation wouldn't have drifted this far so soon. I beg pardon, my lady."

  


"Nemuro," she grunted, because in this particular situation she did not use his title, not liking the power connotations it tainted everything with, "Be serious or I'll kick you out of bed."

  


"All right, all right," he acquiesced knowing her threat to be quite genuine, "Then I suppose that in most circumstances, they're both true. Power corrupts and it also attracts the corrupted, more often than not. You shouldn't be so mutually exclusive, Utena, it's one of your greatest problems. You refuse to realize that something can be both one thing and another."

  


"I asked for your opinion, Nemuro, not an analysis of what you consider to be my faults," she muttered into his chest before turning her face to the open air to continue, "It doesn't matter at the moment anyway, as 'absolute' and 'power' are probably both as far away and mindful of us as we are of them."

  


With this, she pulled the blanket over her head and up to his chin and feigned sleep, functionally terminating their conversation. He allowed himself a rare chuckle before loosely curling an arm in the small of her back and turning his own mind to sleep.

  


At Ohtori Gakuen, a ruined dynasty was finally coming awake.

* * *

  


  


To Be Continued . . . Wow, surprising, huh, considering there's a 'Chapter One' up there and all.


	2. The Nature of Commitment

Chiaroscuro: Of Light and Shadows

  


Chapter Two: The Nature of Commitment

  


By Gabi-hime (pinkfluffynet@yahoo.com)

  


A/N: _Rijichou_ is Akio's official title – Chairman of the Board. Here it is meant sarcastically. _Ouji-sama_ means prince, as I'm sure you all know. 

* * *

  


  


Three months into their relationship, he unceremoniously asked her to move in with him over an omelet in the slick black metal and frosted glass of his kitchen. She mulled over it for a few moments, kicking her feet like a child against the steel barstool that stood as one of the three primary dividers between the kitchen and the sparse living room before agreeing she said, not only out of convenience, but because it would be "good for him." He was of his own opinion on how exactly it was supposed to be good for him, but kept this to himself and helped her move in a few assorted boxes of junk.

  


Her impact on the apartment became obvious after only a few weeks of their new living arrangement. When she had moved in, he'd claimed that he would somehow organize her personal chaos into something that could be contained on his precise art neuveau shelves. She'd jokingly responded that it wasn't possible and had been proven true, as the few boxes labeled only as "stuff" expanded like a gas to fill up all available space.

  


While his small glass coffee table had previously been graced by a only few exceedingly technical journals, it now had a scraggly potted geranium on it, which Utena only rarely remembered to water. The plant's salvation rested in Nemuro's hands alone, for he was organized enough to water it regularly. Still, he had to admit, her presence did make his apartment seem more like a home, and not by any stretch of the imagination was it through domesticity. She made his apartment look lived in, when it had previously only looked occupied. It was true that she made him actually enjoy spending time there, clad only in slacks and loafers, reading whatever technical journal stirred him that day, when previously he had spent all his time at his office, coming home to his sterile apartment only to sleep.

  


Conversely, he not only improved the health of her pet geranium immensely, but he was also instrumental in introducing her to a number of authors that she would later swear herself by. He kept her on schedule and was always available for a moral or philosophical debate at any hour of the day or night. He was also always quick to point out when something was a singularly bad idea, before her enthusiasm got the better of her and she ended up in situations that she did not particularly want to be in at a later date. He was still not on call often enough to prevent all her impulse buys, however, and his apartment was now currently graced with several truly hideous lamps that she'd picked up at a second hand store for "a really good price." Privately he was just waiting for her to forget they were around so he could dispose of them in a humane fashion.

  


They really were suited to one another: the brilliant lecturer who looked as if he might still be in high school despite being at least thirty, and the athletic women's basketball coach who many swore was still a teenager. People asked for her identification so often when she ordered drinks out that she was used to flashing the card that verified that she was indeed twenty four. The University's intellectual proletariat might have started to talk about the strange sense of eternity that pervaded them had the Professor's admirer's not policed the school so thoroughly. Whatever thoughts there were concerning the youthfulness of the Professor and his companion remained private and little changed in the politics at the University despite their by no means private relationship, except for the occasional tussles Utena had with his "fan club."

  


And so, life settled into routine. They woke up, went about their daily business, returned home to some measured entertainment, and generally enjoyed each other's company. If one had asked the Professor what he saw as the greatest obstacle in their relationship, he would have identified it as both her incredible naiveté and her sometimes unpredictable temper. If one had asked her, she would have had no difficulty volunteering his cynicism and sharp, glassy wit. Neither of them would have expected it to turn out to be the thing that it was, and neither of them would have expected it to knock on their door one crisp March day.

  


It happened early in the morning. Nemuro had just gotten out of the shower when he heard the knock on the door. Utena, he was sure, was still asleep in a tangle of blankets on the floor, where she'd fallen after a particularly active dream. He'd given up on doing anything about her active dreamlife and it's consequences some time ago, and he was used to waking up and finding her, and all the bedclothes, on a pile in the floor.

  


As she was still asleep, he seriously doubted she would be answering the door any time soon, so he quickly threw on some clothes, leaving his glasses, which he normally did not venture a step without, lying forgotten on the counter of the sink. 

  


He had no idea who it could be, as his visitors were very few and generally came in the form of repairmen or bible salesmen that he turned away at the door. He sincerely hoped it wasn't one of the latter, as he was in no mood to deal with one this early in the morning, before he'd had anything resembling his morning tea.

  


He never remembered to look out the spyhole, but perhaps if he had, he might have avoided the scene that occurred later by simply not answering the door. But really, that would have been only delaying the inevitable, and it was not a solution no matter how one might slice it, for you see, when Nemuro opened his front door he was confronted by a ghost.

  


The lad was young, perhaps fourteen, perhaps twelve, and so lovely and delicate of feature that he looked positively feminine. The light from a high hall window had caught his hair and it glimmered pale lavender silk, rakish and unkempt, as if he had spent the whole day abed, yet still so beautiful, gossamer silver almost, in the light. The eyes were aqua and deep, fathomless. They could catch you in them, spinning infinitely and never let you loose. And suddenly, as he stood there watching this ghost from the past, the fifteen years that he'd lost came screaming back to him, like a heavy rock being tossed to a drowning man.

  


"Ma-mi . . ." the transfixed professor managed to choke out, staggering backward even as he managed to catch himself on the door.

  


It was impossible, yet there he stood, clad in a pale peach dress and matching hat, hair down far past his shoulders . . . and here the illusion broke for as she stepped forward, it came to him that the woman standing before him was not Mamiya, as he had previously mistaken, but the witch consort of the fallen prince himself.

  


"It's _you_," he managed only a shocked whisper as the hundred thousand ramifications of her presence raced through his now slightly overtaxed brain. He couldn't . . . What was . . . What would . . . Damn it, what would _she_ say?

  


He anticipated the situation with more clarity that one might have expected, all things considered.

  


He first became aware that she was actually standing in the room with them when he heard a china teacup shatter on the stone floor of the entry hall behind him. He turned to the sound and it was as if they were caught in a moment of slow time, the nanoseconds stretched out to eternities as he swiveled his head to glance over his shoulder.

  


Of all the mornings for her to take the initiative and wake up and put the tea on while he was still in the shower . . . her eyes were wide with shock, her mouth slightly agape, but it was clear, even from the way that she stood that she too had found her missing year in that first glance at their visitor. As she stood, he knew that he faced the only person who had ever successfully completed the full system of duels. He faced the Prince, and then, as had happened so briefly in that long ago moment in his own Memorial Hall, and as inevitably happened to all who came to know her princely virtues, he loved her with the focus of a man who has finally come to realize that the great truth that he seeks is standing right in front of him.

  


For a moment, there was only the silence of a great epiphany, but then the moment was broken by a soft sighed word, for the woman he stared at almost glassily was not looking at him.

  


"Himemiya," was all she had to say. It was the only thing that it was appropriate to say, and it was also the only thing that it was necessary to say.

  


The Prince and Princess met across the threshold, a wordless embrace punctuated only by Utena's unrestrained tears. She held Anthy as if unsure of her material substance, squeezing her shoulder and then putting her at arm's length as if to again visually confirm that the other girl was indeed there.

  


"Himemiya, you're free," Utena choked on the emotion, her voice husky, "You're here, so you must be free. I had no way of knowing if what I did would work, but I had to try. But you're here. You're here and you're free. You made it out."

  


The depthless aqua eyes softened, and the emotion in them made them seem almost liquid, "Because of you. You were the Victor who became Prince. You set me free and I've come back to you, Utena."

  


The woman-prince embraced the girl again and then stepped back from her to revel once more in the dark-skinned girl's mere being-ness and then she realized that the other girl's eyes had gone glassy and were staring in a familiar vacant way over her shoulder, at something presumably behind her.

  


If Nemuro's glance had been slow, hers was lightning fast as she flipped her hair over her shoulder decisively, as if daring all comers to threaten the happiness she'd just discovered. The only thing she found in her field of vision was a man who stood helpless to prevent what he so clearly saw coming.

  


If, in that moment of epiphany that looking at her had caused him, he had come to truly and singularly love her for all that she was, in both strengths and follies, then she, in that split second of recognition, hated him more than any other person living or dead for what he had done, for what he represented, and for what, she suddenly realized, _they_ had been.

  


Her eyes narrowed to slivers of jagged lapis glass and her hands balled into fists that shook, the nails biting into the palms and threatening to draw blood. She did not look back at Anthy, but simply threw a command that she obviously expected followed.

  


"Go and wait downstairs. I'll come and take you home in a few minutes."

  


Nemuro watched the other woman leave soundlessly, quietly pulling the door closed behind her, and felt, in that matter-of-fact click, the harbinger of his own doom.

  


Utena was in a fury, looking as if she might slay him if he said something that would give her probable cause. He had to attempt and explain himself to her more concisely than he'd managed to during their last confrontation and he had to do so carefully.

  


He stepped forward, desperately wishing for his glasses that would identify him as an ally and not an enemy. He offered both hands palm up, finger spread wanly in an attempt to negotiate a ceasefire before the bloodshed began, "Utena, listen to me. I know that you --"

  


Here she cut him off, swinging a dangerous left hook that he only barely managed to dodge and screaming, "Get away from me! Don't touch me! You can't fool me with your lies anymore!"

  


He responded the only way he could, the only way he knew how: with logic.

  


He spoke softly and calmly, "Lies? Which lies are these? Perhaps you would like to refresh my memory because I don't recall ever lying to you."

  


"This," she waved her hand to indicate the meticulous and lived-in apartment, "You. Us. Everything that's happened is a lie."

  


"I have never been anything other than honest with you. You know that. Right now you're just looking for someone to blame."

  


"Honest? How can you even use a word like that?" she was furious, "How can you live with yourself, Mikage?"

  


"Don't call me that," his response was a little sharper, a little harsher than he'd intended, and she took this as a sign of guilt.

  


"What, are you so spineless you can't take responsibility for your own actions?" she sneered, turning away from him as if disgusted.

  


"That's not who I am any more. I would prefer you not confuse yourself," he was slipping back from their intimacy, becoming cold and condescending again. He realized this and shook his head slightly, as if to clear it, "I'm sorry, that's not what I meant."

  


"Don't you dare try and play to me, you goddamned manipulator. We're through. I don't want to ever see you again."

  


"You find me surprisingly disposable. I should have known I was just a substitute until _she_ came back into the game," he sounded bitter.

  


She seemed to snap, bringing her fist down so hard on the counter that he momentarily worried that she would break something, either her hand, or the table.

  


"Don't you dare even try to bring Himemiya into this. You're not fit to speak of her."

  


He chuckled bitterly, "Your hypocrisy is heartwarming, my dear. I'm glad you find it so easy to gloss over the number of times she manipulated others, including me. I wouldn't want to complicate your little witch trial."

  


"You have no right to talk about her that way. She was being used . . ."

  


"We were _all_ being used."

  


"No one ever cared about her except when she was useful to them," she seemed near hysterical with anger, "It's not the same!"

  


"Oh, it's not? I hate to cue the violins, but when did anyone care about me, other than to use me? Tokiko tolerated my presence in hopes that I might find a cure for her brother. The Eternity project used my brilliance without care for my soul. The Rijichou used me to open the way to the revolution, dirtying my hands so he wouldn't have to dirty his own. Every single duelist who came to my seminar came knowing that they could use me to get the power to protect their memories. None of them cared about me in the least. None of them wanted me when I wasn't a direct use to them. Like your Rose Bride, I was used, squeezed until I didn't have anything to give any more. The Rijichou found pleasure in my torment and when he had no other use for me, he made me into a scapegoat, his whipping boy. He made you see all his sins as my own. He destroyed everything I had left, and then he threw me away. No prince ever bothered with me." 

  


She had never seen him like this; he shook from the effort of repressing something, his iceman exterior broken. Suddenly her fury was just no longer there.

  


"It's not the same," she whispered, as if repetition would make it more believable, "You never needed a prince . . . "

  


"Why? I am not a prince. Look at me. You know me. How many times have you called me 'the Professor?' I am no prince. I am a scientist."

  


"It's not the same," she was struggling to maintain the moral high ground. 

  


"Because I am not a princess? I never thought I would hear such narrow-mindedness from you, Ouji-sama," he sounded bitter again, "If a certain set of genitalia is the defining characteristic of a princess, then you my dear, are no prince." 

  


"But all those people. You hurt all those people. You burned a hundred boys alive," with the bitterness set again in his voice, she could exercise more righteousness.

  


"I am not Mikage!" the force of this statement shook her, because she had never heard him raise his voice, "I am Nemuro. I am 'the Professor;' you named me yourself. I no longer walk the path of shadows. He threw me away and I chose my own path."

  


"It's not that simple!"

  


"I am very aware that it's not that simple, Utena. It's you who have difficulty grasping the concept."

  


He was sharp again, hard as glass. Then she watched him put his head in his hands. He was silent for some minutes before speaking.

  


"Why is it," he began softly, his voice shaking, "That you can forgive her for betrayal but you can't forgive me because I contradict your idealistic picture of the world?"

  


She had no answer for this.

  


"Why am I denied even repentance?" he was shaking again visibly, despite his attempts to control it. He focused on the ceiling and then whispered softly, "How can he control my life even now?"

  


She couldn't speak, couldn't answer him, so after a long silence, he continued.

  


"I'm sorry I've complicated your value system. A shadow, as you would call me, is difficult to classify when the only categories are white and black. Some things are not that simple."

  


He turned to face her again and she realized with shock that he had been crying silently, "Have you ever considered that Black is not White's opposition, but rather, its complement? 

  


The silence was long and deafening, and she refused to look at him.

  


"Do you have any idea what it's like to find your perfect complement and then have her cast you down, the same way everyone else has cast you down? Ohtori played with me, tormented me. He showed me things that he would never allow me to have. He made sure I was aware of every thing he did to me. Do you honestly think he didn't plan this all out? It's happening again, just as he engineered it to. It's almost a pity that he isn't here to watch it this time," he sounded defeated, as if he had given up all hope and had resigned himself to this conclusion. 

  


He walked quietly over to the door and opened it, and then turned his back to her and spoke softly, "Go on. I have no power over you."

  


He waited for what ironically, seemed to be an eternity, until he heard the door softly close and click shut. Well, at least she'd left his life as she had entered. He covered his face in his hands. He needed something, a shower, a logic problem, something, to distract him from this.

  


Then he felt her hands on his back, and she was leaning against him, whispering, "I'm so sorry, Nemuro."

  


He let out his breath in a sob of sorrowful laughter, both joy and pain still apparent in his voice, "It's all right. It's easy to fall back into the patterns that he gave to us. It's very difficult," and these words were expensive for him, "to break out of them."

  


He took a deep breath and then continued, "But I want to make sure that you're not here just because you want to defy Ohtori. The answer to a problem isn't always it's exact opposite. I want you to be here because you want to be here, Tenjou Utena. It should have nothing to do with anything else."

  


Her answer, when it came, was soft and thoughtful, not reckless, as her assertions usually were.

  


"I am here because you are Nemuro, and we," she took a deep, rattling breath, "are the same."

  


He hadn't known he'd been holding his breath until he exhaled it, slow and shaking. Although not one to favor hard liquor he found that now he desperately needed a drink, something to ground him after this almost pharmaceutical experience. But she would grant him even this much boon, because she continued speaking thoughtfully.

  


"But I do think we need to start over after this, and go slow. So much has happened, you know. We're almost like different people. And with Himemiya here now . . ."

  


And there she choked on a realization.

  


"What are we going to do about Himemiya!?"

  


The question seemed to be rhetorical and she seemed to be wondering aloud to herself, but he knew that if he wanted to keep any hold on her then he had to grasp at straws now.

  


"Bring her back here," his voice was soft, barely audible, and only the practice of years kept it steady and even. The words cost him, but he couldn't let her know it, because he knew what she would think. He was grateful for the simple blessing of not having to look at her as he spoke, as she was still standing behind him, "There's a spare bedroom. I think it would be the best thing for all of us. We'll all have time to adjust to this." 

  


She paused at this, thoughtful once again, and then she answered quietly, "I suppose you're right. I'm glad you're here to think things through, Professor."

  


He grunted a half-hearted affirmative, trying to make the best of what was a victory of salvaged waste and unwilling to let her see the signs of his reluctance to invite the other woman into his own personal sanctuary.

  


The silence between them was awkward, no longer comfortable, as it had been. She spoke after a spare second of painfully idle time.

  


"I'll go get her then."

  


She left, fleeing his company, but she blessedly was not leaving permanently. That at least, he had. 

  


He stared at his hands for a moment, long slender fingers splayed helplessly, emptily in the air, and then he left to find his rose colored glasses.

* * *

  


  


To Be Continued – Oh, no way is _that_ the ending. Don't worry. Things get even more complicated in chapter three, where the actual plot is introduced.

  


  


  


  


  



	3. The Messenger Arrives, Previously Shot

Chiaroscuro: Of Light and Shadows

  


Chapter Three: The Messenger Arrives, Previously Shot

  


By Gabi-hime (pinkfluffynet@yahoo.com)

  


  


The scent of roses dogged his presence with a sure-footed ferocity unparalleled except among the finest of hounds. What once Nemuro had counted as intriguing and signature of Utena Tenjou's presence he now found suffocatingly sweet and unsettlingly bewitching when it was focused and accentuated by Anthy's seemingly vacant watchdogging. His newly developed dislike of the flowers was perhaps also due to the fact that she had "tidied away" the martini glasses along the top shelf over the kitchen sink to make room for her roses. Utena found Anthy's devotion to gardening endearing and she seemed completely oblivious to Nemuro's discomfort. As if in rebellion against the change that was coming into his usually precise and meticulous life Nemuro stubbornly developed an allergy to roses.

  


Of course, he was still perfectly comfortable around Utena's pet geranium, or would have been if that plant had also not mysteriously disappeared to make room for more roses, a delicate bud vase on the living room coffee table. His favored technical journals which had also always graced the low steel and glass table had also been 'tided away' to the same place the martini glasses had disappeared to, to make room for a delicate china tea service. It was if Rococo was making a steady play to invade his Bauhaus. Where his own tea service had gone, he had no idea, although it really didn't matter because his own tea had disappeared with it. Oh, they still had tea, to be sure, but it was always an herbal blend with rosy undertones, not the dark English breakfast tea that he favored. Tea time was also whenever it suited _her_. There was no rhyme nor reason to it and damn him if he ever asked for tea with breakfast. There was always coffee for breakfast, fresh, hot, and somehow cloying. He had once asked the location of his breakfast tea, hoping to prepare some for himself but Anthy's only response had been to look rather crestfallen and ask distressedly if he didn't like her coffee. Utena had kicked him under the table and shot him a dark look, muttering something about 'not upsetting her because she's vulnerable, she's trying her best to make us happy' before turning back to Anthy and comforting her. Nemuro had no comfort for either his bruised leg or the continued perversion of his morning rituals.

  


The overabundance of roses weren't the only sign of the changing atmosphere of their shared living space. Doilies were appearing spontaneously, as far as he could tell, and the hideous lamps that Utena had brought back from a rummage sale some months previous now replaced slim stacks of books, journals, and chrome ashtrays, making moot the recessed track lighting in all the rooms and snaking amber cords across the otherwise unmarred black marble floors. The shifting and unfamiliar style of his own sanctuary was unsettling, but it was in the spare bedroom that he experienced perhaps his most acute loss. The day after Anthy arrived so unexpectedly, Utena came back 'from an errand' with a set of brown mahogany bunk beds that looked as if they had spent many torturous years at some summer camp and set about moving her things from their room into the spare room which she intended to share with Anthy. He did not attempt to argue the point, knowing full well that it would avail him little because he knew that Utena would insist that it was 'just not the same' to share a room with a previous fiancé who was female as it was to continue sharing it with a man she had slept with up until the previous morning. It didn't matter to Utena that they seemingly had the same interest in her because Utena refused to see the other side of it. She claimed she needed space from Nemuro to 'think things through' but unfortunately their space was so small that fleeing from him sent her cuddling up to Anthy in a way that she didn't recognize. 

  


Still, despite the fact that he was being driven to distraction in his own home, he refused to seek the sanctity of his office. He fought hard to keep whatever ground he could both with Utena and in their apartment and he refused to retreat no matter what tactics the other cause might front, lest he lose everything. He did not give her the satisfaction of seeing his distress when Anthy 'helpfully' did his laundry, effectively ruining several of his favorite linen shirts even after he asked her pointedly 'not to bother with his things.' He asked her politely again, citing his shirts as casualties but Utena just kicked him under the table again and told him that Anthy desperately needed to feel as if she were a productive member of their household. Since she didn't go out much, she needed the housework to make her feel as if she were 'part of the family.' Besides, Utena had claimed, the shirts looked fine. Maybe a little rumpled, but certainly not ruined.

  


He did not even give her the satisfaction of seeing his distress when she had unpacked the necessities for her 'other friend,' the little simian rodent that she and Utena referred to as 'Chu Chu' and he tried not to refer to at all. He had simply quietly gone downstairs and paid the pet deposit and hoped that the little animal wouldn't leave droppings in the kitchen drawers. Previously they'd had an exterminator come by every week to spray, but Utena had had him cancel this as well, lest the exterminator gas Chu Chu 'by mistake.' Since this incident early on, at least once a month Anthy came home with some small animal to add to their menagerie. Utena laughed it off, saying they 'might as well get their money's worth out of that pet deposit' and attempted to explain to Nemuro that Anthy 'just needed things to keep her busy.'

  


He quietly wished that the iguana, the goldfish, the snails in the terrarium, and the litter of kittens, would occupy her attention, at least enough so that he might divest the house of some of its doilies and perhaps locate some of his blessed technical journals, but she managed to quietly and demurely keep the entire space under her control. Utena didn't even seem to think it strange that Anthy pleasantly called every one of the animals under her care 'Nanami.'

  


On Tuesday nights, after Anthy had fed the goldfish but before she had cleaned the Nanami terrarium, it was time for parlor games and parlor tricks. Previous to Anthy's arrival the only game they'd kept in the house was chess – marble pieces on a glass board, the colors black and gray – but Anthy claimed to be unable to follow the rules of chess and so the games closet had expanded. Frankly, Nemuro suspected that Anthy had a very fine understanding of the rules of chess, considering their quiet battle over ground in the apartment. She was simply so used to playing the inferior to comfort her prince that she didn't know how to behave in any other way, wouldn't rise to Nemuro's silent challenge lest she upset Utena with a side of her the prince had never seen: strategic genius.

  


"Besides," Utena offered "Chess is a game for two people and there are three of us now."

  


And there were indeed three of them. So they ended up playing endless games of Go Fish over watery herbal tea and thickly slathered slabs of poundcake, and Nemuro got used to declaring nearly every round that he didn't have any twos, because apparently this was the only number that Anthy was interested in collecting. As far as he was concerned, their waxed deck of bicycle playing cards might well not have twos in it at all, considering that she had to have queried him no less than a hundred times over the course of their games, and he'd never had a single, solitary two. Anthy rarely won these games, except when Utena let her, but by the end of each match she always had a neat quartet of twos spread by her thigh on the floor. Nemuro went through the motions, collecting threes and fives and nines in neat stacks, because this at least kept them in conversation with each other. At least they could still talk over Go Fish, no matter how awkward it had gotten elsewhere.

  


And so the days passed, and time settled into a different sort of rhythm, one that Nemuro was not entirely comfortable with, but one he could force himself to adjust to. Days glossed into shapeless weeks with little to remark about save the ever changing menu of cakes and cremes for Utena and Chu Chu until finally, one day, the calm broke suddenly on a day when neither he nor Utena were there to anticipate it.

  


The day was chill, forcing him to bundle up in his long ash-black coat and gloves as well as the uneven off-white scarf that Utena had abortively attempted to knit for him for both his birthday and then later for Christmas. He'd lectured all morning to rapt students, his demeanor as crisp and sharp as the past-harvest air and they'd risen at the end of the lecture hour to applaud him. He'd stood it for perhaps a minute before seizing his briefcase and leaving the podium, but behind him the rolling applause built exponentially. Leaving the lecture platform in the middle of an ovation was a very Nemuro thing to do, and they apparently adored him for it. 

  


He didn't attempt to go back to his office after the ovation, knowing that even then it would be crowded with breathless students, heady and awaiting an audience. He left his car for Utena and took a taxi home, much more willing to brave time alone with Anthy than have hundreds of adoring students forced upon him.

  


He was not ready to meet one of his former students in his own living room, seated on the low couch across from Anthy and sipping tea from a delicate demi-tasse. He was taller than Nemuro remembered, grown in the way that all rose-suckled men grew, with long slim legs and wide angular shoulders. Nemuro marked him at fourteen, perhaps fifteen, but he was already taller than the seminar leader would ever be. His hair was tousled, a little long over the ears and parted a bit differently, but still that same familiar caramel color.

  


The boy – no, the young man; who knew how time was passing at Ohtori? -- turned agitatedly as he came in and Nemuro took his time divesting himself of his cold-weather gear in an attempt to provide himself a little longer to think on what might have led to this situation. The young man wrung his hands a little urgently as Nemuro quietly unwound his mess of a scarf and hung it gently over his coat on the rack. He considered his gloves for a spare second before stripping them off and tucking them in the pocket of his storm coat. He knew that if Utena came home to find him entertaining guests while wearing gloves she would have a few choice things to say to him and no doubt she'd be overjoyed to find another lost starling blundering into their nest. As he turned back to the couch the young man's eyes widened slightly, and Nemuro knew him as uncompromisingly as he had that day some ten years previous, as fully as the master of a seminar must know his duelists. Nemuro walked to the edge of the open living room before clasping his hands loosely behind his back and speaking softly, levelly.

  


"Good afternoon, Tsuwabuki."

  


The younger man ducked his head and made as if to stand and greet Nemuro properly but Nemuro stopped him with a single raised hand and Tsuwabuki kept his seat.

  


"To what do we owe the pleasure?"

  


Nemuro was going to play this cautiously. How else did one deal with a possible emissary from a mad autocrat safe and sound in one's living room? Tsuwabuki twisted his hands again and Nemuro marked the pale band of flesh on his ring finger: a brand, but no signet. Ah, so that's how it was. To Nemuro's surprise it was not Tsuwabuki but Anthy who answered, and he found it passing strange because the woman almost never addressed him directly.

  


"Tsuwabuki-kun has been forcefully graduated, Nemuro-san."

  


Tsuwabuki could no longer contain himself and spoke softly, "I've come to see the Victor. I've come to see Tenjou-san."

  


Nemuro could not help but let a slightly exasperated noise escape him, "Wonderful. We'll get together a little support group and all attend group therapy. Would you like to move in as well, Tsuwabuki? I could move out of my room and sleep on the couch. Be sure and bring all the furniture and nicknacks that you can find because I'm getting dreadfully tired of my own."

  


"Tsuwabuki-kun is not here on a social call, Nemuro-san," Anthy's voice was extremely non-combative, soothing him in the same way that she soothed her prince.

  


"No, Himemiya-san," his reply was short and somewhat tired, "I suppose he's not. Well Tsuwabuki, you might as well regale us with your story while we wait for Utena to arrive. More than how you won your freedom, I am curious as to why you are here."

  


Tsuwabuki took a deep breath and then got a firm grip on his green slacks before speaking, as if fisting up handfuls of cloth might ground him more solidly while he wavered over unknown terrain. When he finally spoke it was measured and slow, as if the words cost him a great deal.

  


"I've come to beg the Victor for her help. You have no idea how bad it's gotten since you left. The duels now often end in death and everything seems so hollow, colored in shadows and with no real purpose – and everyone is trapped there, like birds in a hot house, in a glass coffin. It must stop . . . and Nanami-sama, Nanami-sama . . . " here his voice broke off into a sob which he desperately tried to master. Nemuro didn't wait for him to marshal his feelings. His rebuttal came swift and sharp, but as cool and calculated as if he had been lecturing to his students in the hall. In a way, he was.

  


"You must be out of your mind. Going back to Ohtori would be tantamount to suicide for any of us. You've made it very clear that the Rijichou still rules there, Morning-Star King that he claims to be. Have you considered what he would do to us if we were suddenly back within his domain? You had best leave well enough alone, Tsuwabuki, and be content with your graduation."

  


Nemuro's frost-quick response obviously agitated Tsuwabuki greatly and before Nemuro had properly finished he was on his feet.

  


"But the Victor must come. Tenjou-san is the only one who can set them free. Mikage-san, you have no idea. You've never seen the coffins. She took me to see the coffins!" he lost control of his emotions again.

  


Nemuro stared at him levelly and responded quietly, "My name is Nemuro, Tsuwabuki. Souji Mikage never existed, and I have seen the coffins, as, I imagine, has she. The occupants may have rotated a bit, but the coffins are a long standing tradition of the Rijichou's," Nemuro turned a critical eye to Anthy who sat with hands folded in her lap. The rodent was next to her, devouring some sort of fruit tart, "Surely, _you_ must realize that to return to his seat of power is madness."

  


She stared at him vacantly for a moment before bowing her head slightly, "I admit that returning to Onii-sama's kingdom does not strike me as a particularly wise idea."

  


Something inside Nemuro sank as he heard a spare set of keys rattle in the front door. He closed his eyes as if to protect himself from what was coming and then spoke the doubt that Anthy had left hanging in the air, "But?"

  


"I think the decision is in the hands of the prince. If she decides to go back, then I will respect her decision and go with her," It was Anthy's turn to scrutinize him levelly, "As will you."

  


"I will never go back to Ohtori," there was a glassy bitterness in his voice that he could not control.

  


Anthy smiled but there was no humor in it, "Do not delude yourself, Nemuro-san. I know you too well. If she goes, you will follow her."

  


Nemuro's eyes hardened and he looked away, away from Anthy, away from Tsuwabuki who was still sobbing quietly on the couch, away from the door which presently opened as Utena came in bundled in a heavy down field jacket and laden with groceries.

  


"If who goes where?" she asked, curious, turning her back on the door after hanging her own coat up. When she recognized the boy on the couch she nearly dropped the paper bag she was carrying. She somehow had the presence of mind to make her way over to the counter and deposit the groceries there as if an automata, but once this was done she shook off the trance and hurried to the couch. Her first observation was monumentally obvious.

  


"Professor, this is Tsuwabuki-kun! Tsuwabuki Mitsuru," as if for emphasis, she added, "From Ohtori." 

  


Nemuro took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead tiredly, "Yes, Utena. I know."

  


Anthy did not respond to this statement and simply rose without a word to put away the groceries that Utena had brought home. Utena ignored her movements in favor of their new house guest. Mitsuru, for his part, managed to pull himself together when he realized that his supposed savior was standing before him.

  


"Tenjou-san, I'm so glad that you're here. You must come! You're the Victor! You're the prince! I know that it's dangerous and that it's selfish to ask you to do it, but you must come, for their sake. I nearly killed her! And Nanami-sama! Nanami-sama . . . "

  


Utena raised her hands as if in self-defense, "Whoa, slow down Tsuwabuki-kun. What are you talking about? You nearly killed Nanami?"

  


Nemuro shook his head, staring hard at the glasses in his hands, "No, I don't think he nearly killed Nanami, from the way he's been talking. I think he had to fight someone else important to him. Mari, perhaps?"

  


Utena cocked her head at the name, "Mari?"

  


Nemuro closed his eyes again. Mari was a secondary player to a secondary player. Of course the Victor would not know her. It was Tsuwabuki who spoke next, confirming Nemuro's suspicions.

  


"Yes. I nearly killed Mari. I had her down on the ground, bleeding. I don't know, I suppose I berserked, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill her. Not Mari. Not over a bride. Not even for Nanami-sama," he spoke softly, as if lost and unsure of where to go next.

  


Utena took firm hold of his shoulders and gave him a sharp shake in an attempt to bring him back to reality, "What do you mean, over a bride? The duels are still going on? That's not possible, he's got no bride! Who's his bride?!"

  


Nemuro caught Anthy stop stock still to listen to Tsuwabuki's response out of the corner of his eye, but Utena was far too caught up in their own exchange to notice Anthy's sudden keen interest.

  


Tsuwabuki seemed mowed over by the barrage of questions, but he managed to respond, "Ohtori-san. Ohtori-san is the new bride."

  


This declaration left an uneasy silence in the room as Utena strove to come to terms. The silence was finally broken by Anthy.

  


"Kanae," she breathed softly, as if this were an unexpected development for her as well. That gave Nemuro some sense of satisfaction. At least they were all on the same proverbial page.

  


"Shinohara-san is the champion," the boy added quietly, looking away from from Utena's piercing scrutiny.

  


This revelation apparently startled Utena more than the previous one.

  


"Wakaba?! Wakaba is the champion?!"

  


  


Tsuwabuki nodded nervously, "Yes, at least she was when I was thrown out. I know that she was you friend, Tenjou-san . . . "

  


"Is my friend," Utena corrected sharply, "Wakaba _is_ my friend. What did he do to her? What did he do to her to make her that way?"

  


"He wouldn't have had to do much of anything," observed Nemuro quietly, turning his smoky gray lenses over in his hands. Utena acted as if he hadn't said anything.

  


"To win Ohtori-san, she . . . she . . . she killed Yuuko-san, Utena-san," Tsuwabuki stuttered out without meaning to, as if attempting to talk sense into the Victor.

  


This stopped Utena cold and her arms fell limply to her sides.

  


"Wakaba killed Yuuko. Wakaba . . . killed . . . Yuuko."

  


Nemuro quietly put his glasses on and pushed the hair out of his face.

  


"It must be stopped. He must be stopped. We have to go back," Utena spoke with such force that Nemuro knew there would be no arguing with her.

  


Anthy was at her prince's side immediately upon this declaration, kneeling quietly with one hand on her shoulder. In her free hand she held a thick ceramic mug. She passed it absently to Nemuro before speaking. It was dark, rich English breakfast tea.

  


"It will only stop with _his_ death."

  


Utena closed her eyes briefly before responding, "I know. It must be done."

  


"Sleeping dragons will not lie, nor long do they sleep," Nemuro muttered under his breath even as he caught sight of an envelope that was pressed tight under Utena's arm. She'd apparently stopped at their post-box and then forgotten about it. The heavy cream paper made his senses swim and he could not stop himself from leaning forward and drawing it lightly out of Utena's absent grasp. She turned as he did so and watched raptly as he mechanically opened it and laid its contents out on the coffee table before them.

  


Three cards, slightly larger than the waxed cards they played Go Fish with.

  


The Hierophant.

  


The High Priestess.

  


The Fool.

  


He turned away.

  


"Our invitation stands," murmured Anthy absently, half to herself.

  


Utena brightened, "Only three cards. That means he can't have predicted that Tsuwabuki would find us so soon."

  


Nemuro shifted slightly and a spare scrap fluttered out of the open envelope and lost itself under the table. Utena dove for it and after some fishing managed to find it and deposit it in front of them. One by one, they turned away silently to ponder their own heavy thoughts.

  


The Page of Wands.

  


---------------------------------------

  


To Be Continued Again!

  


A/N: Please don't assume that I have some burning hatred for Anthy here. Remember that this story is third person limited from Nemuro's perspective and _he's not bitter_, we swear. Chapter four will hopefully be out sooner than chapter three was o_o.

  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  



	4. A Long, Fatal Automobile Ride

Chiaroscuro: Of Light and Shadows

  


By Gabi (pinkfluffynet@yahoo.com)

  


Chapter Four: A Long, Fatal Automobile Ride 

  


A/N: Shelter, the short one shot Utena and Mikage fic that you can find here: has now officially become part of the continuity of Chiaroscuro. You must read it first or _none_ of this chapter will make any sense. You have been warned.

  


-------

  


After the decision was made, Utena had wanted to set out to throw a monkey wrench in the gears of injustice immediately. It had taken a concentrated effort on Nemuro's part to convince her to wait until the next morning. He was busy on the phone the rest of the evening, arranging for his rent to be paid, direct withdrawal from his bank account for an indeterminate period of time, arranging a sabbatical for himself and offering enough veiled threats that the university was happy to grant one for Utena as well. He even managed to line up a graduate assistant to feed all the Nanami. He had a sneaking suspicion that the rodent would be coming with them.

  


Utena spent the evening packing and unpacking and trying to decide what to take. Nemuro finally pointed out that it probably didn't matter. They were not going on a social call. As for errata they might need upon arriving . . .

  


"I imagine she will see to that," and he had gestured absently at Anthy, who had laid a 'spread' of the four cards that they'd received _en invitatcion_.

  


And that had settled it. When they finally all piled into Nemuro's small black compact car they did so with little more than some snacks for the rodent.

  


When Utena had finally asked how he proposed to find Ohtori even though none of them had clear memories of how they'd found or left the universe ruled by the mad prince, he had simply responded,

  


"I don't propose to find it. I imagine that if the Rijichou wants us enough to send us an invitation then it will find us."

  


Utena did not argue with him. It was too sobering a thought.

  


*

  


It was like an endless tilt at a windmill, only this windmill never got closer and actually _was_ a dragon in disguise. They might be giants, indeed.

  


Utena was fidgeting, rifling through the glove compartment, looking for something to do. The cats-cradle that Anthy had given her had amused her for no longer than five minutes and she was already pacing the cage, despite the fact that they'd been on the road for less than an hour. Utena was a creature of action and the task that lay before them was one of patience. He was confident that they'd stumble upon Ohtori, but it would be in the prince's own sweet time, and not at their convenience.

  


He glanced in his rear view mirror, angled as it was so he could keep an eye on both Anthy and Tsuwabuki and noted with relief that the boy had headphones in his ears. He could hear faint strains of the piano even in the front seat, which meant that he had to have the volume maximized. Anthy appeared to be playing gin with her rodent. His eyes stole another glance at Tsuwabuki as if to reassure themselves and then he turned his attention back to the front seat. Utena was studying a map of Denmark in the world atlas.

  


"You know that this is a trap, don't you?" it was the first chance he'd had to speak to her in at least partial privacy since their little stranger had arrived.

  


She looked up from the confusion of maps immediately, "What do you mean? You don't trust Tsuwabuki-kun's story?"

  


He shook his head, "No, I'm sure that he's telling the truth. He has no reason to lie. I'm also sure that the Rijichou let him go expecting him to find us and lead us back. Little that happens happens without the Rijichou's knowledge or outright orchestration."

  


She was somewhat indignant, "If you were so sure that this was a trap then why did you agree to come along?"

  


He shook his head slightly and had difficulty answering for a moment. Finally, he said only, "I'm the third."

  


She rolled her eyes and then crossed her arms, "The third what?"

  


"High-Priestess-Fool-Hierophant. I'm the third."

  


"Aren't you doing just what Akio-san wants, then? Aren't you just the same as the rest of us?"

  


"If that's the way you want to look at it, then yes, but that's rather simplified. Remember Utena, the solution to a problem is not always to do the exact opposite of what is expected. If you're that easy to read then you may as well just do as the Rijichou wants, because he will always anticipate you."

  


"But -- "

  


"If I had stayed at home and let you rush headlong into his arms then I would be safe, that's true, but the Rijichou would have twisted a knife deep in my gut more effectively that if I was there beside him in the arena," he closed his eyes for the breath of a moment and allowed a sardonic smile to creep onto his face, "Besides, what's that you're always fond of saying? A life lived in fear is a life half lived."

  


"Don't mock me, Nemuro," she grumbled testily, turning back to Denmark.

  


"I wouldn't dream of it, my dear," the sarcasm drained from him and it seemed no longer worth it to attempt to talk sense to her, so he focused on the road again.

  


They drove without stopping for hours and the sun went down but no moon rose, although Nemuro marked the lunar calendar from memory. Gibbous was due, but he did not appear and the road got progressively smaller, bordered at first by low hedges and bushes, then by trees choked by vines, finally by dark, sinister shapes that were just a little too far out of headlight range for him to properly mark them. They were like no native tree shapes he'd ever seen, and after some time he turned to Utena to bring her attention to the vegetation.

  


Except she wasn't in the passenger's seat. Where she'd gone he did not know. They hadn't braked, hadn't rested, hadn't switched about, but Utena was somehow gone.

  


There was only the _witch_.

  


Her voice was as soft as a silken burial shroud and mellow, lulling, "When your mind wanders, do you ever wonder, Mikage-san?"

  


His grip on the steering wheel tightened slightly and he focused on the dark tunnel of pavement-and-trees in front of him, following the pale ghostly white lines until they vanished into the hazy darkness ahead. He shook his head slightly, as if to clear it. He could not remember when the sun had set and it had gotten so infernally dark. He had been driving too long. 

  


"My name is not Mikage," he insisted, tersely. He did not like speaking with the Rose Witch when no one else was awake except her pert little familiar, "Brown Jenkin," he muttered under his breath perversely, before continuing, "My name is Nemuro. You know that."

  


She leaned closer, plum hair spilling over her shoulders and he was lost in that cloying rose scent.

  


"Do you have any twos, Mikage-san?" she trilled breathily and he fixed her with a long, slow look before he was forced to turn away. She continued unabated, "But do you ever wonder, Mikage-san? Wonder what it would have been like?"

  


He didn't bother to correct her again, simply regripped the wheel, palms sliding over it, slick from cold sweat. Somehow, the road ahead of him seemed narrower.

  


"Wondered what _what_ would have been like?" his mouth was somehow curiously dry, and he swallowed with difficulty.

  


And then her hand slid comfortably to his upper thigh and began to laze about languidly and his arms were lost in her hair, still gripping the steering wheel desperately, and her voice was husky in his ear, "Don't you ever wonder what it would have been like if you were my champion? If you were my victor?"

  


Her hand on his chest was smooth and angular, like the hand of a boy, and then it was the hand of a boy and the hair under his nose was spun sliver-lavender, and he burned with the scent and then high over head there was a titanic roll of thunder and lightning split the sky, striking ground somewhere in front of them, illuminating the obscene, dark, writhing shapes on the side of the ever narrowing highway. 

  


As her hands slipped a little higher to play about his face he let out a thin, high scream and covered his face in an attempt to block out the wide, pupil-less green swaths and the wicked, undulating mass behind them. The car screeched off the road and into oblivion and the last thought he had was a fervent prayer that he would be consumed by the fire before they could lay hands on him.

  


And then he was being shaken roughly awake, and he came to drenched in sweat and as the car swam into focus he found Tsuwabuki leaning concernedly over him, hands on both shoulders.

  


"Is he all right, Tsuwabuki-kun?" and that was Utena's blessed voice from somewhere ahead of him.

  


He somehow managed to nod despite the trembling and shakily answer, "Nightmare, just a nightmare."

  


Tsuwabuki gave him a steady look before relaxing his grip and returning to his own seat and Nemuro found himself in the back seat of his own car, staring dazedly at the back of Utena's head.

  


"When did you start driving?" he could not keep himself from asking, no matter what the others would think.

  


"You don't remember?" Utena sounded incredulous, "Then I'm glad I took over. Himemiya thought you were getting a little drowsy, so she suggested I take over for you. We switched about an hour ago."

  


Anthy's silhouette in the passenger seat ahead of him gave no tells, so he let out a long shaky breath before folding his hands on his lap and replying, "Of course."

  


"You should try and get some rest, Professor. I dunno when we'll get there, so I may need you to drive again tonight," Utena advised soundly.

  


He heard the soft mechanical click of the car's tape deck as a cassette was inserted and soon he could brace himself against Rachimanov and felt much better for it. If Utena meant to soothe and comfort him, then she'd made a good choice. He leaned against the door, cheek against the cool glass and pulled his long coat around thin shoulders. He would attempt to sleep, despite the horrors that plagued him if only because for once Utena was making good, strong, rational sense.

  


He let himself go against the soft piano music and dozed, chased by shapeless troubles, but none quite so shapeless and horrible as those he'd seen illuminated by lightning, struck out against the blasted heath. He slept fitfully, but without waking, and it was thunder that finally roused him from his sleep, not the sound of the tires on gravel, nor the shuddering stop.

  


When he realized that they were no longer moving, he sat up sharply to question, but Tsuwabuki was asleep and snoring soundly and Utena was nowhere to be seen. 

  


"Where are we?" he asked the only other occupant of the car who sat silently, staring sightlessly ahead, hands folded demurely in her lap.

  


At the sound of his voice she turned slowly and lifted one arm to gesture out the window, "We're at a church."

  


Nemuro refused to follow the line of her hand and persisted with his questioning, "Is this your doing, Himemiya-san? I know that it was you behind that night horror that I had. There must've been something in that tea that you gave me. I can't prove it, but I _know_ it was you."

  


Anthy raised one slim eyebrow before responding, "This is not my doing, Nemuro-san, it's yours."

  


Nemuro's grip on the driver's side seat in front of him tightened and his knuckles turned white. He would not allow her to run him in circles like this. He did not dignify her with a response.

  


She did not seem to mind, "This is Utena's testing. What happened to you before was your testing. It was my responsibility to see to it."

  


"And how did I fare on your test?" his voice was crisp and glassy. He had no mind to deal with her now.

  


She did not take offense at his tone, no matter how much he secretly wished it, "As I expected: no better and no worse."

  


"Why are you not tested?" he continued, probing for the truth in her web of invented mystery.

  


"I have already been tested," her response was automatic.

  


"And who tested you?" he pressed the point with little mercy, the nightmare still groping ham-fisted at his soul.

  


"Utena," she said, as if this should have been the obvious conclusion and he cursed himself because it irked him that she should presume to condescend and he let it. She continued without waiting for his response, "She's waiting for you outside."

  


He finally followed her previous gesture out the window and it found Utena standing alone in the rain and staring at a titanic cathedral. His mouth went dry and he opened the car door wordlessly and left the sanctuary of the car without thought, drawn to her side despite himself.

  


As he entered the curtain of rain that started a few feet from the car he momentarily wished for the sure weight of his black-handled umbrella, but there was no time to turn back and fetch it from the car. From somewhere close he heard a bell and as he turned, he caught sight of two boys on a bicycle, colored red and green under the lightning. Christmas colors. Perhaps they were magi. 

  


He soon lost sight of them, their visages drowned in the rain and he turned back to Utena only to find her gone and the heavy cathedral door swinging shut at the top of the worn steps. He cursed himself again and scrambled after her, nearly loosing his footing on the treacherous rain-wet stone. He caught himself on the door, fingers grasping at polished carvings, and it swing in easily, balanced finely on a pivot.

  


The dry stone in front of him was terrifyingly familiar, as were the shoes set carefully to the side of the door. Had he read about this somewhere? This couldn't be familiar to him. He'd never been to a church in his life. Not once in his life. But perhaps before, perhaps in another life, when he'd been another-man-the-same-man wearing a threadbare pea coat and the same violet-colored-glasses. Before he was born, before Mikage, before Ohtori, before puppets, strings, and tear-fed-roses.

  


But not before _her_.

  


He stared dumbly at the brown shoes, worn from aimless walking and soaked through with rainwater. If this was her test then why did it feel so damnably like his own?

  


He turned and caught sight of her at the far end of the church, beside the three black slabs and the young man who sat cypress-kneed on a child's stool. He didn't wait for another bit of parchment to flutter from the sky and offer direction, nor did he offer penitence to the church by taking off his shoes as he had done before-after-_then_.

  


He did not wait. He did not think. He ran.

  


Utena was standing opposite the _in utero_ him, as far from the other two coffins as she could get and still stay on the raised dais. Her head was bent and her hair obscured her face and she gave no indication that she was even aware of what was going on, even when the-other-before-Mikage ran a hand soft over the hair of the-other-before-Dios and placed it carefully back into the coffin with her.

  


As they stood, silent, it was impossible not to absorb fragments of the conversation between the in-coffin and the on-stool.

  


"So memories are like treasures. They're treasures of the people you don't have anymore."

  


"I suppose so."

  


"So what do you do when you don't have any memory treasures? Isn't it lonely?"

  


"Yes, it is lonely. I suppose when you don't have memories of your own, you have to find new ones or make some up."

  


"So I'm one of your new memories?"

  


"I suppose so."

  


They continued to watch impotently as the on-stool turned and walked off. Some indeterminate amount of time later a false-god in silver-spun lavender with eyes like a verdant abyss arrived to take custody of the in-coffin and lead her off like a lamb. Apollo-my-lord-the-shepherd he was not, but neither of them lifted a hand to stop him or warn her.

  


After a still of lonely silence backed by candlelight, Nemuro turned to look to Utena and caught his own flickering shadow on the wall.

  


"Kashira kashira, gozonji kashira?" he murmured absently. Perhaps that's all it amounted to: a dialogue of shadows.

  


She was there: rainsoaked, soulsoaked – like a woman drowned, silent as the dead are silent. Had she passed? Had she failed? Had he passed? How was he to judge a test such as this?

  


And then she raised her head and turned and looked at his shadow.

  


"You were here, before."

  


And before had weight. It was weight of Before the Common Era. You were here B.C.E. Only perhaps it should be B.U.E. -- Before the Uncommon Era, because life with the mad prince had been anything but common, but perhaps the uncommon became the common when it was forced upon someone as daily routine just as the common . . .

  


"So were you."

  


"Nemuro."

  


"Tenjou Utena," he responded in kind and then opened his mouth to ask 'Do you ever wonder what it would have been like . . .' but she did not wait for him.

  


"Did you love me?" she asked abruptly, turning from his shadow back to the caster. It was something he'd never admitted, not even during the halcyon days before Himemiya.

  


His answer came curiously easily.

  


"No." 

  


_I love you._

  


_I never stopped._

  


_Don't you dare imply something by asking 'Did you love me?'_

  


Instead of turning glassy, as he would have done, as he expected, she smiled at him and shook her head.

  


"Computers are terrible liars, Nemuro."

  


  


When they got back to the car, Nemuro took his turn driving again and Utena fiddled halfheartedly with the map of Denmark. He had barely turned his key in the ignition when Anthy drew their attention to the sun which was rising behind them, over a hill. They all turned to watch it, even Tsuwabuki whom Anthy had apparently roused. There was something curious about it, as if its center of rotation were off kilter.

  


"In his universe, I suppose he is the sun-king," he muttered to himself, closing his eyes against the parody and turning back around in his seat. He didn't bother to finish turning the key in the ignition. He knew where they were.

  


He was not surprised when Utena jostled him roughly in the arm.

  


"Professor, look!"

  


He opened his eyes slowly as one does when one does not want to see what is on the other side of them.

  


The gates of Ohtori stood open for them.

  


*

  


To be continued in Chapter Five :P

  


  



	5. Who is John Galt?

Chiaroscuro: Of Light and Shadows

  


By Gabi (pinkfluffynet@yahoo.com)

  


Chapter Five – Who _is_ John Galt?

  


  


ALL VISITORS MUST FIRST REPORT TO THE CHAIRMAN'S OFFICE

  


As the car idled just outside the main gate, Nemuro wondered exactly how many innocents had been caught by the sign alone. He certainly couldn't recall the large, fine signboard mounted neatly on the high marble wall at the entrance of campus, but then he couldn't recall entering or leaving Ohtori at all, so it wasn't all that surprising.

  


"It's always been there," Anthy answered demurely from the back seat and it took a full tick for Nemuro to realize that she'd answered a question that he'd only asked silently. Utena did not seem to notice.

  


Tsuwabuki leaned forward between the two seats to better see the sign.

  


"It's like a cruel joke, isn't it?" he asked, and then his eyes dropped and he crossed himself in Eastern Orthodox style, "It's one of those disturbing mockeries that _he'_d think is funny."

  


Nemuro raised an eyebrow as Tsuwabuki went through his holy motions, "I didn't know you were religious."

  


Tsuwabuki shook his head and then ran fingers through the hair that threatened to get in his eyes, "I'm not, but you, well, you have to do _something_."

  


"Well, we may as well do what the sign says," Utena remarked after a moment, struggling to refold the map of Denmark so it would fit neatly back into the glove compartment, "After all, we don't have anything better to do."

  


Nemuro choked at this, though he managed to disguise it in a cough. Had she taken all leave of her senses? Surely she could see that they needed to regroup and plan something. It didn't really matter what kind of plan it was at this point, they'd already arrived in the madman's lair by invitation. He seriously doubted they would be able to do much to level the playing field on that count, but at least they could gather a little information so they wouldn't face him blind. If they were very lucky then he'd invent some new game to play with stupid rules that he actually adhered to. Then, they'd perhaps have a chance at beating him, but it was suicide to mince on up to the top floor of the observatory and ask for an audience with no preparation at all. 

  


Her words echoed back at him. _If you knew this was a trap, then why did you come?_ The answer was simple: because she was his prince, beautiful and strong, and terribly, terribly innocent.

  


"Utena, don't you think it would be better if we took a little time to get cleaned up first? We have been in the car for over twenty four hours," it was Anthy again, sweet and unassuming, her voice laced with something he could not quite place.

  


Utena apparently considered this for a moment and then bit the side of her lip thoughtfully, "Well, I am feeling a little nasty and that does seem like a good idea, not that I want to get cleaned up just for Akio-san or anything. The thing is, where can we go? I can't recall that we passed any hotels or anything on the way here. Not even so much as a gas station."

  


_We didn't pass anything other than freakish monstrosities, unknowable terrors, and that cyclopean church that has now vanished back to whence it came! Don't you think that's a little odd?_ Nemuro wanted to shout. It wasn't as if they could just pop down to the convenience store and buy some wet towelettes and a hairbrush to tidy themselves up with.

  


"I suppose we could go back to where I used to live," Tsuwabuki started slowly.

  


Nemuro shook his head sharply, "We cannot throw ourselves into Akio's grasp with no preparation. It would be as intellectually sound as ringing the Rijichou's doorbell."

  


"I know of a place we could go," Anthy reassured, her voice rich and smooth like buttermilk, with that same unknowable nuance, "A place that's quite safe from onii-sama."

  


Nemuro turned his head sharply, ostensibly so he could look at Utena, but quite frankly so he could study Anthy from the corner of his vision. What was she planning?

  


"Well, that's certainly better than nothing," Utena agreed, "Where is this place?"

  


"If we're going there, then I should drive," Anthy answered in such an unassuming manner that he almost didn't catch the import of her words. _Almost_.

  


"I didn't know you could drive, Himemiya," Utena sounded quite surprised, "That's great! You're more independent than I thought!"

  


At her words the rodent scrambled into the front seat with them. Nemuro drew back but Utena picked up the animal and ruffled his fur. From somewhere the little monster had gotten driving goggles and a white racing scarf. How could Utena not realize that this was _freakish_?

  


"She is not driving my car," Nemuro said flatly. There was no way he was going to trust his car and their well-being to a woman whose driver's license (if she even had one, which he doubted) was for the 'Ohtori' Prefecture and bore the cheerful signature of the Chairman of the Board himself.

  


"Come on, professor, it'll be fine! Besides, who's she going to bump, anyway? We haven't see another car since we got out of the city," Utena reasoned. She did have a point there. Unfortunately, just now they were coming upon a place that had at least one other car that they could run up against, and that car Nemuro strongly did not want to meet.

  


"Maybe you'd be less forgiving if the situation were different. Of course there's nothing to lose. It's not your car that she's going to be driving," he muttered back tersely.

  


Utena rolled her eyes exasperatedly, "Listen, if you have a better idea, then I'm game to hear it, but if you don't I say you suck it up and let Himemiya drive."

  


Nemuro looked skyward for patience before responding, "Oh, now that you've put it that way, how could I refuse?"

  


Utena scowled at his sarcasm and he sighed, defeated. He didn't have any sort of contingency plan so at the moment their best bet apparently _did_ hang with the rose witch, although Utena seemed to have no concept of the idea that sometimes it is better to do nothing than to do something that is plainly ill-advised. He gave up his seat, if only to be away from the rodent, and was soon settled in the back seat again, opposite Tsuwabuki. Sinkingly he felt as if he was the third wheel which had suddenly joined the fourth wheel on a bicycle built sweetly for two. He did not entertain any delusions that he would be categorized as one of the two.

  


Anthy settled into his spot comfortably. She didn't even have to adjust his seat. They were close enough in height that it didn't matter. Nemuro forced himself to ignore her and instead focused himself on looking out the window.

  


He had expected something more monumental when they finally passed through the ancient wrought iron gates, a feeling of creeping doom, a premonition, something. Instead, he just felt somewhat lost, which he had been feeling (more or less) since the witch had first arrived on their doorstep some months ago.

  


She apparently knew exactly where they were going as she drove surely and without glancing about. For this at least, Nemuro was grateful. He had no desire to stop and ask for directions from the helpful faceless locals and this had nothing to do with his gender, rather with his sense of self-preservation. 

  


On the cassette deck in the front of the car the track changed quietly. _ Ein Kleine Nacht Musik_. Well, perhaps that was appropriate, if only in title, because his stomach began to flop in similar rhythm to the violins and flutes as he noted with growing discontent the serpentine road the witch had chosen. While he had no recollection of the world on the outskirts of this pocket universe, he knew this part of eternity's mock up as he knew the lines on his own hands.

  


Surely she wouldn't . . .

  


Even she . . .

  


And then they stopped and Anthy shifted the car into park delicately before pocketing the keys somewhere on her person. Utena was first out of the car, stretching her legs although they'd had quite enough aerobic exercise recently in the grand cathedral, in his opinion. Tsuwabuki scrambled out soon after her followed by the demure witch who refused to even face him. The rodent stayed behind a spare moment if only to waggle its baboon-like bare bottom at Nemuro in defiance. Nemuro refused to move, cheek still resting against the smooth glass of the window. He knew exactly where they were.

  


He would have stayed in the back seat of his own car, hands loose around clothing bar, for an unknowable length of time had Utena not arrived and unceremoniously yanked the door open and out from under him. He tumbled forward onto her despite his grip on the clothing bar, but she caught him in one arm with little effort. She was gesturing behind him with the other, waving animatedly in a wide arc.

  


"Professor, you'll never guess where we are," she assured, helping him to his feet. She provided a discreet shoulder to lean on, which he was glad for when he finally turned and faced the milky Greek revival facade he'd been dreading.

  


He coughed and his hand trembled, but he steadied himself and shifted his weight onto his own feet before facing the rose witch, resplendent in her persimmon pantsuit. 

  


"This is the safe haven you've led us to?" he asked incredulously, folding his hands behind his back in the way he was fond of while calling down graduate assistants, "Perhaps we should've let Tsuwabuki choose after all."

  


The rose witch cast an idle look over her shoulder, apparently not expecting him out of the car so readily. She smiled benignly and looked, not as if she were justifying her actions, but rather explaining herself to a child.

  


"It's somewhere onii-sama would not expect. Because I have caught him off guard I can consecrate this ground. He will not be able to touch us here."

  


"Sanctuary," Utena murmured, and he looked back over his shoulder to find her eyes soft and unfocused. Perhaps she was remembering something.

  


He would not. He refused. It was a road he would not walk. It was no happy accident that the place the witch chose for their sanctuary was the burned out husk of a decade of duels that he – that Mikage had had a hand at setting afire. What she was playing at he still had no idea, and at the present he still could not hope to. Those verdant eyes, heralds of the abyss, wide, deep, and soul sucking and the silver spun lavender that burned like fire, like a sour-sickly-sweet drug in his nose. Those oceans of plum shifted violet, deep and heady that had swallowed him whole and spit out his remains. He felt like screaming. He felt like crying. Where was his prince then?

  


"Thank you, Himemiya," her voice was soft and near his ear. She laid a steadying hand on his shoulder.

  


_Did you love me?_

  


_Of course, you idiot. Only you would ask a question like that and only you would ask it that way. Perhaps we should arrange for you to go back to grammar school so that you might learn your verb tenses better._

  


He squeezed his eyes shut for a bare moment, unwilling to show her more weakness that he already had and then steadied his voice, "Yes, thank you, Himemiya-san."

  


The witch smiled, presumably at both of them, although he had his doubts. She turned back to the facade of the building and kicked off her low cream flats and began to sing softly. It was a beautiful chant, high and airy and by the second round she had begun hand motions that followed the achingly beautiful rhythm. Light flared around her, billowing her hair up and haloing her and the building. As the light faded, slow, soft, and rhythmic, in a tattoo that he somehow knew matched her heartbeat, her bare toes splayed in the earth of the unkept flower bed which stood square center in front of the building and she spoke.

  


"I name you home. I name you sanctuary. I name you safe haven. Nemu -- "

  


"No," his head jerked up immediately, the mesmerizing spell of the song broken, "Don't call it that."

  


"Why?" asked Utena, puzzled, "It is your hall. You can't deny that."

  


He shook his head adamantly, "I refuse to be named a casualty before we even start this war. My name is Nemuro and I need no memorial."

  


He did not even imagine what kind of spells the witch could weave into the building if it shared his name.

  


"Then what'll we call it?"

  


He shut his eyes tightly and gritted his teeth, but it was not the witch or the prince who spoke next, but rather the herald of it all.

  


"Tsuchiya," Tsuwabuki spoke softly, fisting and unfisting his hands, "He deserves a memorial."

  


Nemuro opened his eyes and looked to Utena, lost against this name that rang no bells within his brain, either duelist or otherwise.

  


Utena was not looking at him. Her face went solemn as she nodded slowly, "Tsuchiya-san was the first casualty." She looked lost in a reverie again for a moment, but then she shook herself out of it and turned to face the witch again, who still stood poised, arms embracing and waiting to name. Utena nodded once, surely.

  


"I name you Tsuchiya Memorial Hall!"

  


It was as if the building let out a great sigh and as it did the witch seemed to shrink a few inches and it was only then that he realized that she had been floating a good three inches above the ground during her 'dedication.' As she settled back on her feet, she turned and slowly extended an arm, motioning them into the building. Utena brushed past him and beelined for the witch, offering more than one excited compliment concerning the abilities that she'd just displayed. Then she demanded the honor of carrying the witch into the building since, after all that "she'd have to be tired."

  


Tsuwabuki rushed to hold the door open and disappeared into the building after them, presumably to continue his duty, with the rodent capering about on his shoulder.

  


Nemuro was left standing alone outside the only protection anyone had offered him. He looked back at the car, doors all still standing wide, and briefly considered driving away.

  


_If you knew this was a trap, then why did you come?_

  


_Because I love you._

  


_..._

  


_And I don't trust her._

  


_Besides, you need someone to be your strategist. Duels may be won through courage and skill alone, but wars require more sophistication._

  


_Why did you come?  
  
Because you need me._

  


_..._

  


_..._

  


_Because I need you._

  


He sighed inwardly and closed and locked the car with his spare key. Casting one final baleful look at the ghost-white columned front, he turned and climbed the steps into the building that had once been the tomb of all his hopes and dreams.

  


  


It was just as he remembered: silent and terrifyingly empty, the thick carpet of the foyer muffling even the tiny sounds that he might have made. The receptionist's window was closed. No ghost of his one time paramour on eternal coffee break was still to be found in these halls. He'd dismissed her before having his 'conversation' with Utena concerning their differences and the lack thereof. He almost regretted dismissing her. Perhaps she might be able to provide some information. Then he cast that thought aside just as she had cast him aside previously. He no longer needed her. He'd found a stronger drug.

  


He turned his attention to the wall of his duelists, faceless photographs of all those who wished to protect their precious things, who desired a revolution denied them, who lived by the driving force of their memories. A photograph he'd never noticed before despite his previous years as tenant and master of the building drew his eye and he could not help but gently take it off the wall and fold it under his arm.

  


It was of a young man with pale gray-shaded hair sitting cypress-kneed on a stool and speaking to a girl with long silver hair who was sitting up in a coffin.

  


_Thank you, Nemuro-san. I promise I'll see you again._

  


Down the hall from the receptionist's desk and to the right, by the window: the door to his office was still standing open, as he'd left it when he'd left for his final duel. He was the duel called self-actualization. Or was it self-delusion? Perhaps they were the same. He turned the gilt-framed photograph on his desk face down and put the new wood framed photo he'd brought from the wall of duelists in its place. It was a new world and he had a new sustaining memory. After staring at the back of the delusion that'd kept him strong for so many years he shook his head and shoved to the bottom of one of his drawers. Perhaps he'd give Mamiya a proper burial sometime soon, but not yet, not now. Now the best he could offer was an impromptu burial in discarded file folders. 

  


Despite his best intentions to stay relatively still until Utena and Anthy finished 'washing up' he found himself moving again, following his feet down the hall and up the side stairs to the door of his former workroom. As he stood in front of the smooth walnut door and rested fingertips lightly on the frame he could see the room clearly, floor to ceiling with chalkboards covered in cryptic scribbling, the smell of chalk still heavy in the air and yellowing his fingernails. The door was locked. He knew it was. He'd locked it the day that finding the equations had no longer mattered because he'd found an easier way, a way that wasn't so poisoning, but that was moreso, just the same.

  


His shoulder ached where she'd almost broken his arm ten years ago and his soul ached where he'd been betrayed twenty years before that and everywhere was the heavy smell of chalk and in his pocket was the steady weight of a key that he no longer owned, a key to the door in front of him: a key to the key to the key to the door of miracles.

  


"Extra! Extra! Extra!"

  


He turned sharply and found a shadow cast on the wall behind him. She was slim, arms akimbo, feet spread wide as her shoulders and she sported a high ponytail that curled at the end in a way that defied gravity and physical law.

  


"I can't believe that you're back! I've been waiting for you, Mikage-sama. They didn't think you'd come, but I knew you would! Just wait until I tell them!"

  


This was wrong, somehow not cryptic or veiled enough. Surely there were some bizarre costumes or abstruse metaphors to pepper that last statement. What was going on when even the prophet spoke sense?

  


"My name isn't Mikage. It's Nemuro," he told the shadow.

  


Then he felt a gentle tug on his coat and turned to find a slim girl standing behind him, one hand still on her hip, mouse-brown hair still caught up in that obscene twist.

  


He blinked at the girl and then turned back to the shadow.

  


"I didn't think you talked to us. I thought that broke whatever code of ethics you abide by," he spoke softly, following the outline of her shadow with his eyes.

  


"Times are changing, Mika – Nemuro-sama. I'm so happy that you came back. I've always . . . you know, I've always wanted to talk to you, but before, well, I couldn't. I wasn't supposed to. I'm sorry," the shadow hopped from foot to foot and he finally turned back to the girl, whom he found was blushing, "I'm sorry. I haven't introduced myself! I mean, I'm sure you know who I am and all, but I promised myself I would be polite and now I haven't. I'm so terrible at this. Ambiku-san and Brigid-san are always threatening to throw me out of the club. My name is Cassandra. No last name. Only the special people get last names. You can call me C-ko. I'm the third, but then, you knew that. Heralding for you was my first big assignment. You really don't know what an honor it is to meet you. I hope you think I did an okay job. A-ko and B-ko wouldn't let me do anything else after that. I just had to assist them. They said it was too important for me," here she made a little face, "But I'm rambling. You must be exhausted, since you just arrived. I'll get the word out among the faceless that you're back. I can't wait to tell A-ko and B-ko. I'm so glad you're back, sir. You can certainly count on me for as long as it takes," finally out of breath, she saluted smartly and then clasped her hands behind her back, military fashion.

  


Well, here was one asset, certainly. It was unwise to underestimate the power that the shadow players had at Ohtori, although he had never known them to get directly involved in anything. Perhaps it truly was as she had stated earlier. Times were changing, rules were changing. The game was no longer the same.

  


"Thank you," he murmured quietly, "I appreciate your support."

  


She blossomed under his praise and looked as if she were about charge right into another monologue when suddenly she looked very troubled and touched her ear lightly where he noticed she was wearing an earpiece. She listened quietly for a moment before raising her eyes to his again.

  


"I'm sorry, Nemuro-sama."

  


"What?" he demand was sharper than he intended and she winced slightly. He repeated himself again, more gently and she shook her head.

  


"Out front. You should go see yourself."

  


He nearly fell over himself in an attempt to get to the front hall again, visions of horrors unnamable dancing in front of his eyes. When he finally burst through the main doors he almost collided with Utena who was shielding her eyes with her hand and watching something in the distance.

  


"What? What is it?" he stuttered, trying to regain his balance against the heavy carved door frame.

  


Anthy pointed in the same direction that Utena was straining and he found that if he squinted he could just make out a lavender tow truck and his own small black car. Utena handed him a slip of paper. He turned it over and read it before laughing mirthlessly as he recalled Tsuwabuki's earlier observation. It was one of those disturbing mockeries that _he_ would think was funny.

  


Their car had been towed for being parked in an illegal area.   
  


He somehow did not think it was a coincidence that she had parked in the fire lane.

  


"It's all right," she intoned absently, "We won't need it for a while anyway."

  


The rodent on her shoulder nodded in agreement.

  


"After all, we can walk to the Observatory," said Utena thoughtfully.

  


He shut his eyes as he slumped against the door frame weakly.

  


"We only need the car if we want to leave."

  


*

  


To Be Continued in Chapter Six

For those curious who don't necessarily have a head for names, Tsuchiya is Ruka's family name.  
  


  


  


  



	6. Teatime of Danger

Chiaroscuro: Of Light and Shadows

Chapter Six: Teatime of Danger

By Gabi-hime (pinkfluffynet@yahoo.com)

  
  


_Isagiyoku kakko yoku ikite yukou..._

_Tatoe futari hanarebanari ni natte mo..._

The song he'd heard before, perhaps half a dozen times, whenever fate decreed he need make a visit to the Rijichou. It was the only song that ever played in the express elevator up to the chairman's top floor office that reigned as the crowning pinnacle of Ohtori Gakuen's campus -- smooth and sickeningly light and jazzy, just the sort of thing that he'd put in his elevator: power muzak.

Before today, he'd never known the words, never known that there were words to the song, had never cared to know them, but the witch was singing in precise cadence to the melody, hands folded behind her as she swayed slightly from side to side in particular rhythm.
    
    _In the sunlit garden, hand in hand, _
    _We drew close, and soothed each other with the words:_
    _"Neither of us will ever fall in love again."_

It was a strange song, fierce and strong, unusual against both the slow jazz and in the witch's usually demure and subordinate voice.

"Words have power, Nemuro-san," she murmured softly, pausing in her recital to once again answer an unvoiced question, "I've spent a great portion of my life in this elevator and after a time, I made up the words to this song. By singing it, by naming every note, I am empowered, we are empowered. We take the revolution. My brother often leaves such weapons lying carelessly around. He does not think that anyone else will know enough to use them."

"Akio-san is always too over-confident," Utena commented, balling one fist on her hip, "the bastard."

Nemuro leaned back against the cool mirrored glass of the elevator before speaking, "The Rijichou thinks he has already won. In fact, he has been convinced of his assured victory since he started this game decades ago."

"Eons ago," Anthy corrected absently, but Nemuro ignored her, quite set on waking Utena to the clear and present danger they were in. They needed to be on guard. This was no social call and calling the Rijichou unpleasant names was going to do nothing to prepare them, no matter what the rose witch might claim.

"What we must remember when dealing with the Rijichou is that _we_ are fighting the pitched battle. All he has to do is weather the storm. He will fight to maintain his kingdom. We are fighting to destroy it."

"If the chick cannot break out of its shell, then it will die without truly being born," Anthy hummed softly as the lights dimmed momentarily, outlining her in rose-hued light, "We are the chick, the world is our shell, and praise be to Abraxas for that."

Nemuro turned away, studying his own reflection in the mirror. Of course, _she_ would sing the praises of Abraxas, but then, so had he, once upon a time. He had the key to his scriptures in his pocket as damning evidence. Revolution was just another way of spelling Eternity, after all, and hadn't that been what they had all wanted so desperately?

"I hope we did the right thing by leaving Tsuwabuki at the hall," Utena said thoughtfully, biting her lip as she did. 

Ah, the good shepherd, always so careful of her errant little sheep. 

"I'm sure that Cassandra-san will take care of him," he responded quietly, "The shadow players are still abroad at Ohtori, and that at least speaks well for us. Cassandra-san said that the rules are changing – perhaps they are still in transition. If the game is malleable we must make sure that the rules fall in such a way as to favor us."

"That doesn't sound very honorable, Professor," Utena reflected, chewing her lip thoughtfully.

"Onii-sama is not a very honorable person, Utena. I agree with Nemuro-san on this count," the rose witch spoke deliberately, but with a certain deference whenever she called Utena by name. They were back in the Kingdom now, Nemuro knew, and here more than ever Utena was the prince and victor and the witch was very respectful of that, "If we can influence the way this game is played to our benefit, then we should do so, but it will not be easy."

"The Rijichou's weakness is his overconfidence. He does not think it is possible for someone to win against him playing a game that he invented. We must use this to our advantage," Nemuro spoke chillingly, smoothing his black leather gloves firm in between each finger. He was in control now -- he knew is place now -- their strategist -- provided Utena _listened_ to his advice. It was calming, and as he pushed his glasses up his nose, the world swam into clarity and he began to build the post-revolution Kingdom for them aloud, "But there are other powers at work in Ohtori, as there have always been, and although these are lesser powers, they must not be overlooked. There is a new Bride – Ohtori Kanae. She will be utterly devoted to the Rijichou and with little will left of her own. It is unclear if her assumption of the title Bride gives her any powers other than her sacrifice. It is best not to press her until such becomes clear. Do you have any insight into the subject, Himemiya-san?"  


They were at war council in the express elevator of their own Lucifer. It was time to hear what the witch thought. He extended her an open hand, giving her the limited floor of their war room, and she nodded, offering her own palms up in a swift gesture of truce. She opened her mouth to speak when suddenly the elevator shuddered and the cold iron railing that marked the front of the elevator shuddered apart and revealed the curtained silence of the student council's balcony. It was eerie. Nemuro had no idea that the express elevator had even been built to stop at floors other than the lobby and chairman's floor. There were no buttons on the inside control panel, just a telephone with no dial tone.

Anthy leaned forward into the yawning darkness of the open gate palms forward and eyes closed, as if questing for something, and as she did Nemuro felt the hairs on the back of his neck bristle, and whipped around, but Utena was quicker than he was and already shouting for Anthy to get down because as they stared into the deep dark in front of them the mirror at their backs slid soundlessly open.

The blade sang through the air before he could react, before Utena could throw Anthy to the ground, but the witch did not seem disturbed. She gracefully sidestepped Utena's arm and caught the dagger with her open palm. Nemuro fought the urge to avert his eyes in reflexive abhorrence even as Utena watched in wide-eyed shock, slumped half against the iron gate. 

Anthy calmly pulled the dagger out of the palm it had pierced like a half-remembered stigmata and dropped so that it clattered noisily at her feet. The sound seemed to hang in the air longer than was natural, and after it finally rang into stillness, she spoke clearly and with a hint of amusement in her voice.

"One dagger is a poor choice for killing a bride who has taken a million swords into herself. If you wish to play at adult games of intrigue and subterfuge, I suggest you choose your moves more carefully in the future."

The mirrored panel began to snap shut on its oiled runners, but Utena recovered herself and managed to wedge herself into the rapidly diminishing space and forcefully haul out the small figure who crouched there. She was all mulberry and black, like merlot on a burial shroud and Nemuro almost did not recognize her in the strange bastard child of of a duelist's uniform and flouncy little skirt, but then she rolled and crouched like a cat in the corner near him, eying the dagger that lay just out of her reach and just in Utena's kicking range.

The situation now under control, he folded his hands behind his back and raised an eyebrow and felt something resembling a sardonic smile creeping onto his face, "I believe I told you that you had no choice but to kill the Rose Bride at one point, Takatsuki-san, but this is really not the way to go about it. The way before you has not been prepared this time and I'm sure that the Rijichou will not be pleased to find that you made an attempt on his sister's life, no matter how ineffectual that attempt might be."

"Shiori-san!" Utena cried incredulously, finally placing a name with the pent up little creature who still glanced furtively at the dagger that lay two palm's breadths away from her hand. The impossible thing was that Utena still did not understand it, still did not understand her and persisted in asking the unfathomable, "Why?"

As if suddenly understanding her position, Shiori's eyes softened and widened in an enticing way, "But Tenjou-san, you heard him. The way before me has been prepared. I must kill the Rose Bride. I can't help it. I must do what I must."

Utena shot him a killing look and spit out her words as if she hated each one of them, "Your fault. You made her the way she is. You corrupted her! She's still confused, even now. She doesn't understand! Fix her!"

"She is the way she is because that is the _who_ she is, Utena. I corrupted _nothing_. Confused? Not hardly. She knows exactly what she's doing," his retort was quick and sharp and almost as incredulous as Utena's had been. How could she not understand this? What this girl presented and who this girl actually was were two very different things. Why was this such a difficult concept for her?

Utena stared at him hard and he refused to let her throw him down, to debase himself as she required. He could be blamed for quite a few of the sorrows of the Kingdom, but the character flaws of the whole of the faceless stream of humanity was too large a burden to lay at his feet, and he would not take it.   
They were so engrossed in being coldly furious at each other over the head of this lost little lamb that neither of them reacted quickly enough when she lunged suddenly for her dagger. It was the witch who stepped forcefully on her hand before it crossed even half the space, and then pinned it surely to the ground with her weight.

Utena blinked at Anthy uncomprehendingly as the witch pointedly ignored Shiori's mewling as her heel ground efficiently into the back of her hand, leaving a stigmata of its own. Anthy smiled pleasantly and with the same empty joy that Nemuro had seen her often front her prince with and then asked politely,

"What shall we do with her, Utena?"

Utena crossed her arms and bowed her head so that her hair fully concealed her eyes. She stayed this way for several seconds before she looked again at Nemuro. She looked unsure, as if debating something, and in frustration he stripped the glove off his right hand and showed her the pale band of flesh around his ring finger. Her eyes widened as she came to a startling revelation and then they found what they sought on the Shiori's confined right hand – the white rose seal that signified a contract with the devil himself. Her signet was no longer black. Shiori had made her choice clearly. She was a duelist. Utena frowed with the barest touch of a kind of nameless sadness and then her features set emotionlessly and she nodded at Anthy. 

"Let her go."

Anthy bent and retrieved the dagger that Shiori had thrown casually, and then gripped her head surely by the hair at the top of her head and forced her chin up. Nemuro thought for a moment that the witch might actually disobey a direct order from the prince and slit her would-be assassin from ear to ear, but the witch only smiled demurely and cut a pretty curl of hair from her head before easing the weight off of her hand and letting her scurry back to her corner quite without her dagger.

A twitch of a smile crossed Nemuro's face, but he spoke mirthlessly, "The game has not yet started, so Utena does not think it fair to take any pieces, no matter how open-handed they are offered. Consider yourself lucky, Takatsuki-san. When next we meet, the game will have already begun."

Anthy's eyes were glazed jade glass as she laughed easily, folding both the dagger and the lock of hair somewhere secret on her person, "Tread softly, Shiori-san, and remember that I have you."

Her gaze shifted from between them, but finally came to rest on Utena, soulful as a spaniel. Utena spared no expression and simply shook her head and Shiori was gone into the darkness of the curtained student council floor without another word. Nemuro stared after her, and wondered just who had orchestrated this move.

"For there are many lesser powers at Ohtori that should not be overlooked, and many games that go on behind the scenes," Anthy echoed his previous statement before falling into the melody of the song again, which had started softly at the moment she spoke.
    
    _I'll go my way. No turning back. Before the time comes_
    _For each of us to choose a different path_
    _I'll release the so precious, oh so precious memories._

  
  


The elevator shuddered again and the doors on either side of them slid firmly shut again and they began their second ascent. Utena shook her head and leaned up against the side mirror, which he assumed was relatively safe. 

"She seemed so young."

"Ohtori is a garden where children do not grow up, Utena," the witch explained gently, and he was cursed with the familiar quality of her words. Had someone said them to him once? Perhaps in a dream. She continued, "Shiori-san is as we left her -- still sixteen years old."

He forcefully pulled the glove onto his bare hand, holding it firm with his teeth and once again was filled with a strange familiarity over the movement. He'd done this a long time ago, in another place – in another elevator – in another life. He caught Utena watching him rather openly and knew it was because she had seen him meticulously put on his gloves hundreds of times and never had he done so with the forceful jerk of his teeth. He ignored her attention and folded his hands behind his back again.

"But don't be fooled by appearances. Students at Ohtori are far older than they would seem," he was lecturing again, as if they were his new dutiful seminar, "We met ten years ago, but you were not fourteen. Perhaps you were never fourteen and I was never one and twenty. Perhaps that is why we are forever so."

"You are closer to truth than you realize, Nemuro-san," the witch smiled sweetly, and drew closer to Utena in a way that seemed instinctual. He made no comment. Utena had realized that she was staring at him and had turned away, blushing lightly and startled and changed the subject loudly and ham-handedly to try and distract herself and them from the moment.

"So! Where'd Chu Chu get off to? I haven't seen him in a while!"

It was not a statement that needed exclamations, but it got them, and he felt himself smiling at her despite himself, but the witch had caught her eye, and tossed her deep plum hair over her shoulders as she cryptically replied,

"He's seeing some old friends."

Bless that much at least. He was not expected to deal with awkward sexual tension in a crowded elevator while at the same time managing to keep the rodent off of his person. As far as he was concerned the rodent could stay busy with friends the entire time they were at Ohtori, even if that meant that Nemuro would not know what he was up to. Some comfort is worth the peace of mind that it costs.

When he actually turned back to their conversation he found Utena closely inspecting Anthy's hand. It was smooth and unmarred by any mark. The witch laughed teasingly at her prince.

"The Rose Bride has no blood. Mine all drained away a thousand years ago. I'm fine. I told you, a dagger can't kill a Bride who's taken a million swords," with those unfathomable words hanging in the air, she turned back to her song which climaxed unexpectedly.
    
    _Tatoe futari hanarebanare ni natte mo_
    _Watashi wa sekai wo kaeru_

A hundred times on the drive to Ohtori and in the space of time since they'd arrived, a hundred times he'd imagined their entrance into the Rijichou's private chambers, played out all the possible scenarios, met all the grisly fates he could think of, and still nothing prepared him for the moment the elegant doors parted with a chime and his stomach seized up on itself. Utena apparently felt nothing of his unease because she did falter at all, simply balled her hands into fists and charged resolutely out of the elevator. Anthy she pulled behind her like a shadow, and he was left standing alone in the elevator. He stood stock still for two beats, watching them go, then heard the chime sound again and had to scramble awkwardly through the door as it almost closed on him. He would not let the Rijichou cut him off so easily.

The room was curiously dim. The Rijichou had shuttered all the windows and the only light came from a candelabra that stood in the middle of the room. He made it to the two winter white couches just in time to see the Rijichou stand, collar fetchingly open at the neck, arms wide almost as if to embrace them. 

"I'm glad you -- "

Utena wasted no time and landed a left square under his jaw before he could even finish his first invitation. Somewhere deep inside Nemuro a dark sort of glee bubbled. This was something he had wanted to see for a long time, even if it was not necessarily the wisest way to play the game. The Rijichou reeled backwards as if Utena blow had really cost him, and he raised his arm defensively as if to ward off another blow. 

"Now, there was no call for that."

"You're lucky I didn't kick you square in the groin to start out!" Utena spat, dander up and clearly ready to fight whatever war that the Rijichou required right then and there, "Here's a hint: that's what I'm going to do next."

Akio clearly did not doubt her resolve, and hopped backward over a couch, presumably to put some cover between himself and Utena's more than capable feet.

"Come now, Utena, you didn't come back here just to beat me senseless, did you?"

She advanced mercilessly, "Oh, I didn't?!"

Suddenly he stopped retreating at the edge of the flickering candlelight and smiled in a way that chilled Nemuro's soul. He spread his arms wide and the whole building seemed to shudder as the shuttered windows jolted open, drowned the room in sunlight and laid bare all there was to see.

He chuckled, "No, you did not."

  


And there, standing behind him were perhaps a dozen people, all staring at Utena with deep, cold eyes as if they hoped to bore through her soul. He moved to support her, but his attention was drawn to his immediate left, where a ghost in deep plum velvet skirted him to attend her king.

She was as he had said, barely herself and almost entirely the Bride, her eyes the same verdant green that seemed to stare so aimlessly. Her dress was not the red-dyed-with-her-own-blood that the witch's had been, but instead a deep violet faintly ghosted with red. Her trappings and thorny golden crown were the same, marking her as the lamb, the sacrifice that all those behind her burnt every time the ascended the stairs to heaven and dueled in a field of illusions. She tilted her head as she leaned close to Akio who put a protective arm around her. Her voice when it came was breathy and barely there, like a memory of something that has come and passed away, and he felt himself falling into her, and into the deep scent of roses.

  


"Welcome ho -- "

But Anthy had transposed herself between this new Bride and her prince before she could finish speaking. As she spoke, he found himself again and moved to stand behind Utena, although whether to help bear her up against the silent gaze of all of those who stood against her or seek shelter from Kanae's inviting abyss, he could not say.

  


"Call her down, Onii-sama. That will not work."

The Rijichou quirked an eyebrow, and his self satisfied smile made no attempt to leave his face, "As you wish, Anthy."

  


Kanae withdrew without a word and went to sit quietly behind them on the couch. Nemuro did not like the idea of her at their backs, but the witch seemed unconcerned with it, so he tried to follow her example. Utena had remained motionless this entire time, and Nemuro suddenly realized it was because she had frozen against the shock of a cold and vicious stare that came from the center of the group of duelists.

  


"Wa-ka-ba," she whispered, and a tear forced itself out of her eye. He brushed it away under the pretense of squeezing her shoulder to keep the Rijichou from seeing exactly how effective his strategy was. 

  


Perhaps he did not need to see, because he raised his hands and one by one the duelists filed out an obscure door behind them. Where it led, he had no idea, but as they left the tension in the air thinned. The onion princess who had once been one of his purest pupils left last, thrusting her naked sword in the ground before calling Kanae sharply to her. When they had gone, Utena almost slumped against him before rocking her weight on her feet again and wheeling to face the master puppeteer.

  


"Have you calmed down a bit then, Utena? Your passion is charming, but inconvenient at the present time. Shall we discuss this as two adults now?" he extended his hand graciously, and as he did he just for a moment glanced at Nemuro, who still stood with his hand on Utena's shoulder and Nemuro felt the dream question ring in his head hard like monastery bells chiming out vespers.

  


"Have you ever wondered what it would have been like, Nemuro-san, if you had been the champion?" 

  


And he almost lost himself in scent of roses and the sharp taste of sweat and the feel of a firm muscled body under his own, lost himself against the sea of roses, violet and palest of green and silver-spun lavender that was the same color as his own Mamiya's hair, Mamiya who had danced the waltz of death with him, Mamiya who had never deserted him, never deserted him because he'd never been there in the first place, standing alone, hot wax dripping from his own hand. Professor Nemuro in the Conservatory with the Candlestick. But Utena was still under his hand, and in the rough fabric of her old t-shirt he found purchase against the avalanche of scent and imagery and his fingers bit so hard into her shoulder that he thought they might break and the room swarm into focus again, his smoky-gray colored world, and Utena elbowed him in the gut and muttered close in his ear.

"Professor, knock it off. That hurts."

He loosened his hand as ordered, and after a moment was able to step away, free standing as the witch was, and together they formed a triangle with Utena at point.

"What do you say, Utena?" the Rijichou was silky, sweet and sinister, promising and baiting her in a way that made Nemuro's fingers bite into his hands. He knew the nails would have drawn blood by now and blessed his presence of mind to wear gloves. He kept his face as dispassionate as possible and waited for Utena to speak. In the end, it all came down to this, and Utena's voice was curiously soft and terrible as she spoke, a tremor that seemed to shake the foundations of the universe

"I challenge Ohtori. I do _not_ challenge you. I challenge your system. I will tear it down with my own hands if I have to. I will tear you down. I will set them free."

"You will duel with me again, then?" he asked amusedly, steepling his fingers.

"I did not challenge you to a duel," she said simply, hands lose at her sides and as she stood, firm and unyielding against all the dark prince revealed to her, Nemuro would have followed her into the very mouth of hell – and perhaps he was even now, "I declared a war."

The morning-star threw his head back and laughed openly, and with much merriment. 

"As you would have it, my lady. You have requested a war, so we shall have one. You shall have one night to prepare and we shall stage our first battle," he threw an open gesture at the projector that still dominated the room and backed him like a silent partner, "Provided you don't find dueling among shadows and illusions stifling."

"There is truth even in shadow," she spoke sharply, and with a cold fury that Nemuro had not heard since she had nearly killed him in his own kitchen. Perhaps this once his prince stood to defend him as well as her princess. As he stood, backing her fierce beauty as best he could, he finally found his voice in the cavernous room.

"And there is wisdom in darkness as well as in light."

From the corner of his eye he saw the witch exchange a solitary look with the Rijichou over Utena's head before opening her arms and muttering swiftly and softly under her breath. As the room swarm around him and blurred like a spilled drink over watercolor, the last thing he knew tangibly was the Rijichou's laugh.

"Just so."

  


*

  


To be continued in Chapter Seven.


End file.
